


Savage: The Avengers

by dragonchallenge



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Avengers Family, F/M, Fights, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 34,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23288986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonchallenge/pseuds/dragonchallenge
Summary: Seventy years after the death of the two men most important to her Victoria Davies has finally gotten Steve Rogers back, but his return isn't without complications. Forced to confront her past demons, Victoria must traverse her newly tense relationship with her best friend. When an old flame attacks New York with an army of aliens, Victoria and her fellow heroes must put aside their differences to defend their home. But with the Avengers, it's easier said than done.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

The phone beeped with the end-of-call warning as I stared at the clock and jumped off the couch. It was far later than I'd thought it was. I tossed my black leather jacket over my shoulders as I turned to walk out of my apartment. Steve would already be awake and waiting for me. I normally would have already been with him. I'd meant to be at his temporary home an hour ago but had gotten caught up on the phone with Nat, who had initially called to wish me a happy birthday but had ended up spending most of the call questioning me regarding Steve.

Nat had wanted to meet Steve from the moment she'd learned that he had come out of the ice two weeks ago. He used to be one of her favorite things to ask me about when we'd first started working together. She was a naturally inquisitive person. She had been even more so since she had joined S.H.I.E.L.D. half a decade ago. Fury and I had both insisted that Steve wasn't ready to meet anyone new yet but I had promised her that I would eventually introduce them.

One of these days Steve would have to start meeting people. He couldn't live in the past forever. I had a feeling that Steve would like Nat when they finally got the chance to meet. They were very different people but Nat and I had very similar personalities. It made sense as I had known Nat since she was a teenager. At some point, I knew that I would have to introduce Steve to the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and the rest of the people I worked with, but I was taking my time. I needed to let him adjust to the new world before I did.

Once I'd grabbed my wallet and left my apartment, locking the door behind me, I walked downstairs. It sounded busy outside. I could hear the chattering of the cameramen who were waiting for me to come downstairs. They had been lingering in front of my apartment building for almost two weeks now as they waited to get any information on Steve. It wouldn't come from me. I wasn't telling them anything. All I was doing was taking care of Steve. I was the only one who went to see him. I was the only one he wanted to see. I walked into the lobby and let out a deep breath.

As usual, there were dozens of cameramen from different news stations outside my apartment building. Most of them believed that I had Steve staying with me. "Miss Davies!" one man yelled. "What can you tell us about Captain America? How is he doing?"

He was a reporter I had seen before. He'd been here every day since Steve had woken up. I rolled my eyes as I walked out of the lobby and out toward the pavement. The cameras followed me, flashing brightly as I walked. Most of the reporters remained a few steps back from me (as they were always afraid I might retaliate in annoyance) but the man who had just called to me stepped far too close for my comfort. I ripped the television camera from his hand and turned to throw it against the stone wall of my building, where it smashing into a thousand pieces.

A bright smile formed over my lips as I turned back to the man, who was giving me a frightened look. "Next time it's your head," I warned him.

His voice died as I moved past him and threw one of the reporters off to the side so I could get to my car. It technically wasn't mine. Fury had given me a budget of $40,000 from S.H.I.E.L.D. to buy myself a car to use but I hadn't liked anything. So, I had hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s financial accounts and bought myself a brand-new Audi R8 Spyder, which had cost a little over $200,000. Naturally, Fury had yelled at me for it but had eventually realized that it was a beautiful car and allowed me to keep it with the caveat that he would be allowed to use it.

The only reason I had agreed on the condition was to get him to stop complaining at me. I climbed into my car, slammed the door behind me and revved the engine. It roared to life as I threw the car into drive. I moved the car quickly into the crowd without slowing down. I didn't care if I ran someone over. The only problem would have been if their bodies had damaged the body or undercarriage of my car. Thankfully for all of us, the reporters all moved out of my way. I was barely a mile down the road when the Bluetooth chirped with an incoming call from Fury.

Fury's voice came loudly over the car phone. "S.H.I.E.L.D. has to pay for that man's camera, you know?" his stern voice called.

What the hell did that have to do with me? That sounded like a personal problem to me. "Cry me a river," I snapped.

"Are you going to see Captain Rogers?" Fury asked, knowing that I didn't care if he had a problem with my breaking the man's camera.

"Where else would I be going?" I hissed.

"Do what you can to get him to join S.H.I.E.L.D," Fury ordered.

My gaze narrowed as I laid a little harder on the gas. "It's been two weeks, Fury. I'm not going to start badgering him to join until he's ready," I told him. Steve deserved some time to try and collect his thoughts and get used to the modern world before trying to make something of himself. "He's still at the Retreat and I think it's going to be a while before he's ready to move. Give him time."

"Speaking of time, what have you used it to talk about?" Fury asked.

It was his way of asking if I had told him about my previous career choice, which Steve never needed to know about. "None of your damn business," I snapped. Fury let out a deep breath on the other end of the phone. I supposed I could tell him some of the things we'd talked about. "Mostly trying to catch him up on everything that's changed. It's been almost seventy years. That's a long conversation. We seem to keep returning to the Internet. He's enjoyed that so far. I showed him Netflix. I think he's having a good time passing the hours with that."

"What the hell is Netflix?" Fury asked.

"It's a streaming service that started a few years back," I explained.

It was slowly gaining traction. I could see it had the potential to go somewhere. "I see your credit card statements," Fury said. A few years ago Fury had demanded that he see my credit card statements after realizing that I never seemed to run out of money, despite how much I bought. It was shortly after that he realized I had been using S.H.I.E.L.D.'s account for most of my purchases. "You don't have that."

"Sure, I do," I said curiously.

"Whose credit card did you use?" Fury asked tensely.

"Whose do you think?" I chuckled.

It was enough to make Fury snap. "You get paid! You don't even pay rent! We pay your rent!" Fury shouted, his loud voice causing the speakers in the car to crackle. I laughed at his aggravation. This was exactly why I used the company credit card for my purchases. "Why do you constantly use the company credit card to buy your things?"

"Because it annoys you," I chuckled.

"Have you told him at all about what you've spent the last sixty-seven years doing?" Fury asked, probably too annoyed with my spending habits to continue that conversation.

My heart lodged itself in my throat. That wasn't a conversation we ever needed to get into. "I'll get there eventually," I muttered.

"You need to tell him the truth. Before someone else does," Fury warned.

The comment didn't sit well with me. No one was going to tell Steve about what I had done in the almost seventy years we had been apart. As far as he was concerned, I had been upset and done a few bad things and then begun working for S.H.I.E.L.D. where nothing else of interest had happened. He didn't need to know all the nasty truths. He wasn't going to hear them from me and I would be damned if someone else told him. I could see my eyes turn red in the rearview mirror.

If there was one person I didn't trust to keep my past a secret from Steve, it was Fury. "Is that a threat?" I growled.

"It's a warning. He's going to find out one way or another," Fury advised. My heart sank. I was determined to keep the secret, but was it feasible? I wasn't sure. "It's going to sound a lot better coming from you. He trusts you. Don't let that trust get broken."

The easiest thing to do would have been to treat it like a Band-Aid. Tell him quickly and pray that he understood. But what if he didn't? We had been through so much together. He had forgiven me for all the terrible things I had done since I was a little kid. But there had always been some light in me. There had been no light and no goodness in me for most of those years that I was alone. How could someone as good as Steve forgive the things I had done? He had begged me to do something good with my life and I had done the exact opposite.

"I know," I muttered, angry that I had to admit that Fury was right. "I'll say something to him when I figure out how."

"Think quickly," Fury advised.

"Yeah, I know," I snapped as the line went quiet. "Not going to tell me a happy birthday?"

"Stop breaking things we have to pay for," Fury huffed.

He hadn't wished me a happy birthday since we'd met. "Umm... No," I said flatly.

"Tell us how it goes," Fury said.

"Yeah, yeah," I huffed.

He wasn't going to hear anything from me until he stopped being an ass. I leaned forward and hit the screen to end the call as I pushed the engine a little harder. Steve's new home was in upstate New York. Considering how fast I drove, it would only take me about an hour to get to his temporary home in the woods, far away from most people. It was a log cabin that I had always enjoyed. I'd only been there a few times since it had been built but the time I'd spent out there was nice. Quiet. It reminded me of the home I'd almost had.

Just one day after Steve had woken up from his trip in the ice, Fury had made the executive decision to send him to the Retreat. We didn't use the shelter that often but it was the perfect place to keep Steve while the world got used to him being alive. The constant flash of cameras and the massive crowds in the city would be too overwhelming for him. He was already overwhelmed with the idea that he was alive in a completely different time. Steve had quickly asked me if the Retreat was safe, which I had promised him it was.

The Retreat was a log cabin that was lined with a Vibranium alloy. The kitchen was fully equipped with a refrigerator, sink, and microwave. I had made sure that Steve had enough food to survive and anything else he might have needed. The living room had a few couches, however, they were very uncomfortable. I had brought some blankets and cushions to try to make the place a little more comfortable for whatever the duration was that he would be staying here for. He had insisted that he didn't need anything but I knew he didn't like being here.

Anything I could do to make him a little more comfortable, I would do. I had brought some of the extra comforters from my apartment and scattered them over his bed and couch. He had mentioned that he didn't enjoy sleeping on the bed anyway, though. I had to wonder if it was because he had become accustomed to the feel of the ice without even knowing it. I'd been careful to ensure that his apartment was always warm. He had noticed, of course, but hadn't said anything about it. I knew he appreciated it.

There was a computer in one corner of the cabin that had become Steve's main connection to the outside world. I had spent hours upon hours trying to explain to Steve how to use the computer and how the Internet worked. It was something to distract him from his new life. The Retreat had a laser fence that lined the perimeter of the property, keeping everything inside contained. Security cameras showed everything that happened along the area. We had all realized that it would be a safe place for Steve until he was ready to come into the public eye.

Steve had been at the Retreat for a little under two weeks now. I had spent a few nights with him mostly at the beginning of his stay there. It reminded me of the old days. He understandably didn't want to be alone after having spent the last sixty-six years alone. We mostly slept on the couch together after spending hours talking about whatever came to mind. Sometimes about the people that he would start meeting and other times about how the world had changed. The only thing we didn't talk about was my past, not that Steve hadn't tried to get me to talk about it.

Fury, though wrong about many things, was right about one thing. I was going to have to tell him about my past eventually, even though it would ruin things. It would be best if the truth came from me and not someone else. Steve wouldn't be happy about things either way, but the only way he might forgive me was if I told him the truth and explained why I had done what I had. Not that I had the best explanation for my actions anyway. He would never forgive me if I continued to hide the truth.

As I drove through the country, I did everything possible to try and think of ways to reveal the truth about my past, though I didn't like the thought of any of them. So, I settled on turning the radio up and trying to block out my thoughts. I could deal with the truth of my life later. I drove up the road humming to myself and hating the drive. I wanted to bring Steve back to my apartment so I didn't have to keep making the drive. But I also wanted him to stay with me. It was the first time in a long time that I didn't feel lonely.

Even when I had been surrounded by people, I'd always felt lonely. I had felt lonely for almost seventy years. It took me a little under an hour to get to the Retreat. I scanned my agent badge under the laser to turn off the security system long enough to allow me through. I waited for the gate to open just enough to squeeze through before driving inside. I sped up the driveway toward the small wooden cabin and laid on the horn for a moment to warn Steve that I was coming to see him. I didn't want to startle him.

It seemed that I hadn't needed to warn him. He was already outside, raking the front yard from the fallen leaves. It was the first time I had seen him outside of the Retreat since he'd moved here. He glanced up as I pulled into the driveway. "Nice car," Steve commented.

As he hadn't been outside, he hadn't seen the car yet. "Thanks," I chirped. I hopped out of the car and closed the door behind me. "It was a present from S.H.I.E.L.D."

Steve smiled at me, not realizing that I had lied about the car, as we met in the middle of the driveway. He wrapped his arms around my waist as I leaned my head onto his shoulder, hugging him tightly around his midsection. The one thing we had begun doing was hugging each other protectively every time we saw each other. It reminded me that he was here. It wasn't just in my mind. It had all started the day I had gotten him back. When we had shared our first hug after I had gotten him back I hadn't let go of him for a long time.

It seemed to have taken hours but I had finally managed to get the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to give us some time to ourselves. Steve was being moved to the Retreat in the morning. We would be staying in the building - out of the public eye - tonight. Standing barely an inch apart, Steve and I walked into one of the small housing units and I closed the door behind us, scowling at some of the security agents who were keeping guard outside the door. We turned to each other, staring right into the other's eyes. I could see how pale and overwhelmed Steve was.

He didn't speak as I launched myself into his arms. My patience had been tested for long enough. It had been almost impossible for me to wait until we were alone just so I could do this. I had to hug him and I couldn't do that with the agents and Fury watching me. I had a hard-ass reputation to uphold. None of them were used to seeing me lose my composure around them. It was one thing for me to lose my temper and throw something or kill someone, but I had never let them see me cry or be weak.

Steve seemed shocked at my sudden reaction as I had been mostly stern and teasing since he had seen me. His body was stiff for a moment before he reached up and wrapped his arms around my back. Tightly. So tight that he would have broken something were I a normal person. I could feel his body trembling from head to toe. I wondered if he was going to start crying. I wouldn't have blamed him. Tears were already on the verge of falling for me. We were locked together for so long that the sun had now set.

"I wasn't expecting that," Steve whispered into my hair.

I didn't want to release him but I knew if I didn't let go of Steve now, I never would. So, I released him and brushed away the tears that were about to fall. "I - I'm sorry," I stammered, taking a few steps back. "I had to be careful with what I said or did with you around them. They know me as a hard-ass. I couldn't look soft around them."

Steve nodded. "I understand."

"How are you doing?" I asked carefully.

It was a stupid question and I wasn't the first person to ask him, but I had a feeling that I was the only person he would give the true answer to. "I'm not sure," Steve muttered.

"That makes sense. It's a hard pill to swallow," I said.

"But I'll have to swallow it," Steve answered.

I'd learned a long time ago that I couldn't go back to the places I wanted to be. "Yes. We can't go back in time. Honey, I would love to turn back time. You know that," I told Steve, resting a hand on his bicep. He nodded slowly. "Unfortunately, I can't do that. No one can do that. All we can do is move forward, however we can do that."

Steve let out a breath. "I'll uh - I'll work on it."

It was the least confident I had seen Steve since before he'd undergone the super-soldier serum. "Hey, you're not alone. I'm gonna be right here with you. I'll help you with whatever you need," I promised.

Steve smiled weakly. "Thanks, Vic."

I smiled back, feeling my lips waver. The smile didn't feel right, but being with him did. "It's really good to have you back, Steve," I said, hearing my voice crack.

"It's good to be back, Vic," Steve said.

We stood together and faced each other with weak smiles on our faces. This would be tough but we were supposed to be together. I knew that we were both close to tears as Steve took my hand and tugged me back into him, right where I was supposed to be. He pressed his mouth into my hair as I held him tight against myself. Things may have been awful in my life for a long time, but I finally had one of the most important people in the world back in my life. And I wasn't planning on letting him go anytime soon.

In the present, Steve and I remained wrapped together for a long time. I supposed I was afraid of letting him go and having him vanish. I was happy to see him again. I'd hated not seeing him yesterday as I had been far too busy to come out here. I'd felt lately that every time I walked away from Steve that he would vanish overnight. When he finally let me go, I smiled up at him, determined to not let him know that I wasn't okay. I also wondered if he knew what today was. He hadn't kept a calendar since waking up. I was relatively certain that seeing what year it was bothered him.

"Happy birthday, Vic," Steve said, taking my hand.

My lips turned up in a grin. He did know. "I'm impressed you remembered," I laughed. Steve smiled. "Sweetie, you don't have to tell me that. I'm ninety-one years old. I've heard it enough over the years."

Steve and I both laughed at my admission that I was now pushing a century of life. "So? I've always liked birthdays and I haven't been around for most of them," Steve said.

"I know."

"I got you something."

My eyebrow quirked upward. "You got me something?" I asked. Steve nodded. "I didn't know you'd left here."

"I didn't. I went on that website you told me about. Amazon?"

Something about that idea amused me. I'd explained online shopping to Steve but I hadn't thought he'd picked up on it. "You ordered something from Amazon?" I asked disbelievingly.

Steve shrugged bashfully. "Well, I tried. I think I did it wrong."

How the hell did someone order something incorrectly from Amazon? "How?" I asked.

Steve ran a hand nervously over the back of his neck. "One of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents delivered the package to me the other day." I still didn't understand what he was talking about. I followed him into the cabin and into the living room, where there were dozens of leather-bound journals sitting on his coffee table. I barked out a manic laugh. "I don't know why they sent me that many," Steve muttered over my laughter.

"How many times did you hit 'confirm order'?" I asked breathlessly.

"A few times," Steve said. He looked extremely bashful as I howled with laughter. "It didn't look like it was loading!"

Right... I probably should have explained the concept of lag to him. "You have to give it time!" I said. I continued laughing as I picked up one of the journals, turning it over in my hands. "Oh, man. Fury will be pissed when he finds out about this." Steve looked at me worriedly. "Don't worry, he won't blame you. He'll blame me for telling you about Amazon and giving you the credit card information. He's already mad at me for breaking a thirty-thousand dollar camera this morning."

Steve didn't look worried anymore. He looked confused. "What did you break a thirty-thousand dollar camera for? And what kind of camera costs that much?" he asked in shock.

"A television camera. It was someone from one of the news stations that hang around outside my apartment. The man was asking me about you," I explained.

"They're all asking you about me, aren't they?" Steve asked.

"Yes. They're not hearing anything until you're ready."

"I'm not sure if I'll ever be ready."

"I understand."

At least I had lived those sixty-six years. I had seen the world change. I couldn't imagine what it would have been like to wake up in a completely different time than the one I'd gone under in. "I'm not sure what I would say," Steve admitted. "I don't know if I've come to terms with what my life has become."

"Trust me when I say I understand that. It can be hard to come to terms with a new reality," I told him. Steve sighed as I looked down at the leather-bound journal and smiled. It reminded me of a present I had given him years ago. "I like the journal, by the way. I'm sure I can figure out a way to fill them all."

Steve laughed. "I'm glad you like them."

We wandered over to the couch and I dropped the journal on the coffee table, opening Steve's computer and going to open one of the news webpages. It was how we talked about modern-day. We listened to news stories and I explained what was going on based on whatever they were talking about. We would usually stop after a few hours and I would then answer any questions he had about the past. At least, the ones I was comfortable with answering. But now Steve stopped me from bringing up the news.

"What's wrong?" I asked curiously.

This had become our routine. I knew something was wrong if he was stopping me. "Vic, I don't want to talk about modern-day anymore," Steve said. I raised an eyebrow as nerves set in. The look on his face didn't sit right with me. "I don't want to talk about the Internet, or the wars, or what your favorite kind of new food is. I want to talk about you."

I'd known this was coming. "Me? You know me," I teased.

"I knew you almost seventy years ago," Steve pointed out. "A lot of things had to have happened over those last few decades."

"Sure, but none of it's that interesting," I lied.

My past was likely extremely interesting, but I wasn't ready to divulge it just yet. "You didn't do one interesting thing over the last seventy years?" Steve asked disbelievingly.

"Nothing worth mentioning," I said, shrugging.

"I don't buy that," Steve said.

"I'm not spending the next seventy years going over everything I've done while you were in the ice," I told Steve as sternly as possible without alerting him that something was wrong. I chuckled uncomfortably, pushing my hair behind my ears. "Trust me, Steve, the present is a lot more interesting."

"Why don't you want to talk about it?" Steve pushed.

"Because it wasn't always easy!" I shouted, losing my temper for a moment. I let out a breath to try and calm myself down, tucking my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. "All right? Let it go. Please. I don't always like remembering the days that I was alone with nothing and no one to turn to."

That caught Steve's attention. "You were alone?" he asked. Shit. I hadn't meant to let that out, but I supposed he would have found out that I hadn't remained with our friends during the rest of their lives eventually. "What about -?"

"Alone, Steve," I interrupted sharply. "I didn't drag them into my problems."

"What do you mean, your problems?" Steve asked.

"Exactly what I said," I growled. "There were a lot of problems after you two... after what happened." I never could say what had happened to them. "I knew that Roosevelt would spin the story the way he wanted, which was exactly what he did. He told the rest of the world that I was responsible for your deaths and they believed him. It was easy, after all. It wasn't unbelievable to think that I could have done that. I became a monster and I couldn't be that character with the few people left I cared about so close to me."

That was as close to the truth as I cared to get with Steve. "What did you do?" he asked carefully.

"I walked away and lived out my life in solitude," I answered plainly; another half-truth.

"You didn't have them?" Steve asked carefully. "For all that time, you didn't have your friends?"

"No," I said.

"And no one else ever -?"

"No."

It was the end of the conversation. I didn't want to talk about it any longer. It didn't take me long to realize that Steve was giving me a long look. His face was full of concern, likely for my well-being. I knew that he had been hoping that I'd had a more positive past. I felt a little stab of disappointment with myself. I hadn't meant to let the truth come out about my past so quickly and suddenly. I didn't say much but I had said just enough for him to get an idea of what my past had been like. Steve was giving me a scrutinizing stare.

"What?" I snapped irritably.

"So, you never…" Steve trailed off.

He was just as awkward as he was in the forties. "Married?" I asked, filling in the blanks.

Steve nodded bashfully. "Yeah."

"No," I said.

"Never?" Steve asked disbelievingly.

"No."

"Did you ever consider it?"

"Sure, I did. I even came pretty close back in nineteen forty-five," I teased.

A bitter smile crept across his lips. I'd come so close with Bucky. No one else could have held up. "That's not what I meant and you know that. After him... was there ever anyone else? Did anyone ever come close?" Steve asked.

I smiled vaguely. "No one ever came as close as he did."

"Sorry to hear that," Steve mumbled.

We smiled at each other. Marriage wasn't in the cards for me. Even back then it never had been. "Don't feel bad. It wasn't something I ever wanted once I lost him," I told him.

"But you never thought about being with someone?" Steve asked. "I just -"

"What's wrong with never getting married? Plenty of people don't," I hissed.

Just because I'd never gotten married didn't mean that I'd lived my life as an old spinster. I'd found a way to entertain myself. "I know that, but I also know that you wouldn't go seeking company out," Steve pointed out.

"So?"

"I don't like the idea of you being alone for all those years."

"Who said I was alone?" I shot back.

It took Steve a moment to realize what the playful grin on my face was for. I'd never had trouble getting company for the night. Steve covered his eyes and groaned in disgust. "Okay, that wasn't what I needed to hear," Steve said.

"The sexual revolution of the nineteen-sixties. It was great. I've got to get you to read up on that," I chuckled, leaning back against the couch.

Steve shook his head. "No, thank you."

"The world's changed a lot, Steve. Don't blame me for changing with it," I said.

Steve's face turned red with embarrassment and what I imagined was shame. "I'm not," he said quietly. "Sorry, I just wasn't expecting that."

I grinned, glad I had changed the subject. "I know."

"You know that I wouldn't judge you for whatever you've done, right?" Steve asked carefully.

Just like that, we were back to square one. Something about Steve's comment didn't sit well with me. He didn't know how far his comment extended. It wasn't just the company I had kept at night. There was a lot he had to try not judging me for. "Yeah, of course. You never were one to judge people," I said slowly.

We were silent for a moment before Steve spoke again. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Did you ever have kids?"

That was a good joke. Kids and I didn't mix. "No. Never wanted them."

"No?" Steve asked curiously. "I seem to remember hearing you and -"

"Do me a favor and stop that comment right there," I sneered.

The last thing I needed to hear was the plans I had once had with my long-deceased fiancé Particularly not those plans. I didn't want to think about the life I could have had with him. I didn't want to think about what I had lost. I had finally begun getting over what had happened that day so many years ago if there was such a thing. I didn't want to think about the depression and fury I had experienced following his death. It was easier to pretend that it had never happened as I had for so many years.

"What's wrong?" Steve asked.

In the reflection of the glass on the side table, I could see that my eyes had turned red. "I don't need to hear his name. I don't want to hear his name," I said, swallowing thickly as I waved him off. "Just drop it."

A worried look turned up on Steve's face. He had always known me to love our deceased friend. "Did something -?"

"Please, I don't want to talk about him," I interrupted.

"Why not?" Steve asked. I scowled at him. "We didn't talk about it before I went into the ice. Let's talk about it now."

There was a reason I hadn't talked about his death with Steve before he'd gone in the ice. It was too painful to talk about then and still too painful to talk about. "Let's not," I countered. "For you, it's been a few weeks. For me, it's been sixty-seven years. Enough people have said it. It's pathetic to still be mourning someone so long after their death so I just don't think about it."

Steve looked heartbroken to know just how much Bucky's death was still affecting me. It hadn't stopped, not since I'd lost him. "I don't think it's pathetic that you're still mourning him. You were in love with him," Steve said.

"Yes, I was," I replied.

Steve let out a deep breath as he reached over and laid a hand on my leg. "That was the one thing I regretted just before the impact with the ice. I hated the thought of leaving you alone while you were in the middle of mourning him. It felt a little selfish," Steve said.

If there was one thing Steve's actions weren't, it was selfish. "It was anything but selfish," I told him. "I know that now. You were doing the only thing you could to save the world."

"But I gave something up for it," Steve said.

"You gave your life. It's the ultimate sacrifice."

Steve shook his head. "Not really. I thought I was giving my life. When I was going into the ice I thought that... I didn't want to die but I was okay with it. I had accepted that I was doing something good for the world," Steve said. I smiled weakly at him. I had felt his sense of peace he'd had just before his supposed death. "I didn't even bother thinking that I might survive the crash and I certainly didn't expect that if I did survive the crash I would wake up in a different time."

"Things are a little different now," I teased.

"Just a little bit," Steve replied. We chuckled as I leaned back against the couch. "You're a little bit different too."

"It's hard not to change over seventy years," I answered nonchalantly.

"You look happier," he continued.

"It would have been hard to be more upset than I was the last time we saw each other," I pointed out. Steve and I both laughed. I'd hit one of my darkest points just before Steve's crash, though it had gotten darker. "Trust me, Steve, I'm happier now because you're back. One of the hardest things I ever had to do was learn to live without you both."

"What did you do?" Steve asked.

He was trying to goad me into telling him the truth about my past. He knew that I was hiding something. I still wasn't ready to admit the truth but I supposed I could tell him something. "Took off for a little while to try and ride out the storm. I knew that Roosevelt would pin the deaths on me and I couldn't risk that falling back on everyone else, so I did what he wanted. I vanished," I answered half-truthfully.

I hadn't tried to make myself known but the media had followed my story. "When did you come back?" Steve asked.

"Here and there a few times over the years," I told him, which was the truth. "It took a while for me to fully come back into the spotlight."

Steve nodded. "They seem to rely on you."

A mad laugh escaped me. They would have been pathetic without me. "It's easy to become dependent on someone who can read minds and control others. They've gotten used to having me around. They just watch out when it comes to talking to me. No one wants to annoy the all-powerful mutant in the event she retaliates," I explained. They weren't fond of me but they did know that I was the reason they had been so lucky on missions. Steve laughed and rested his hand against my knee again. "Whether or not they trust me is another situation."

Very few people in S.H.I.E.L.D. trusted me. "It looks like Fury trusts you," Steve said.

Trust wasn't the best word for what we had. I didn't know what it was that we had. "We have a... interesting relationship," I said. It was the best way to describe my relationship with Fury. "We've known each other for years and it can be tough to get along sometimes. We have similar personalities."

Steve chuckled. "I can tell."

"Fury's a good guy and he cares about the people. That's what matters," I said honestly. Fury was kind of prickly but I knew he wanted to do the right thing. "He just drives me up the damn wall."

"I can see why," Steve said. I laughed as I picked up my soda and took a long slug of it. We sat in silence for a while longer before Steve spoke again. "Did you help found S.H.I.E.L.D?"

"No. Chester, Peggy, and Howard did. I wasn't working with them yet. I was still in hiding and taking care of myself," I answered. Steve nodded. It was the perfect opportunity for the truth but I couldn't bring myself to say it. Not yet. "I guess I started working with them a few years later. S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't that interesting."

"It seems pretty interesting," Steve said.

"It's not," I countered.

"So, what is interesting?"

"Modern-day," I said, desperate to change the subject. I hated talking to him about myself. "The Internet is fascinating. Online shopping is great. You don't even have to leave the house to buy whatever you need."

"Vic..." Steve said quietly.

"What?"

"I want to talk about him."

A lump formed in my throat. I couldn't talk about him. There were very few times over the years I had talked about him. I let out a deep breath as I looked Steve in the eyes. "Why? Why do you need to talk about him? It's over," I said desperately.

"It's like you said. It's been almost seventy years for you. It's barely been a few weeks for me. I guess I'm still trying to process it. I lost my best friend. I lost the woman I loved. I lost the new family I'd made in London," Steve said. I swallowed the lump in my throat, trying to keep from getting sick. We had both lost so much but I supposed I hadn't thought about it like that. "Now it feels like I've lost you. You always lit up whenever you talked about him. Or, I saw something in you."

Of course. He thought that bringing up Bucky and talking about him would bring me back to the way I had been in the forties. But that woman was long gone. "You haven't lost me, Steve. I'm right here," I said defensively.

"But you're not the same," Steve pointed out. "It's like you have this wall up and no one can get through it."

"That's me. That's the way I've always been," I argued.

Steve shook his head. "Not to this extent. Not to me."

My core temperature was heating up as I found myself getting tenser. "Don't make this into something more than it is, Steve," I said, waving off his concern. "It's been a long time since we last saw each other. It's been a long time since I was close to someone the way I was with either one of you."

"And I want to be close to you again."

"So do I but you're not making it easy. We can drop the past. Let's just move on."

"Why are you so hesitant to talk about anything that happened to you?" Steve asked. I looked him in the eyes but didn't speak. "Tell me something. Tell me something about what you did after he was gone."

"Nothing," I lied. "I mourned."

"That doesn't sound right."

Naturally. He knew me well enough to know that I had done something more than mourn quietly. "Okay, I got a little angry and did a few things that maybe I shouldn't have," I admitted quietly. That seemed to have finally caught his attention. "But time moved on and I got over it."

Steve raised his eyebrows curiously. "You got over it?"

"Yes."

"Vic -"

"Drop it, please."

"If you tell me one honest thing that's happened to you over the last seventy years," Steve pushed.

That was where my patience snapped. "I loved him!" I shouted. Steve jumped as a blast of flames shot off my hands and burned from the tips of my hair. "Okay? I loved him and I lost him and it devastated me. When I left I did some questionable things. But I realized what I was doing and I stopped and I never went back to it. I just... I don't want to talk about him because it brings me right back to those days. When I felt like I didn't have any other choices."

Steve's face turned down in a frown. I knew he felt guilty for pushing me beyond my limits. He leaned forward and took my hand in his, unafraid of burning himself. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have pushed," Steve muttered. I shrugged my shoulders. "I didn't think about how you might have handled things after we were gone."

"Not well," I admitted.

"But you stopped. That's what matters," Steve said.

Because he didn't know the whole truth... "Yeah," I mumbled.

"Thanks for telling me," Steve said guiltily.

"Thanks for being an ass about it," I snapped.

Maybe this was as far as the truth needed to go. I looked over at Steve and smiled as he laughed at my comment. Now that I had told him the 'truth' he would drop it. If someone brought up the truth about my past it wouldn't matter. I had told Steve enough of a truth that he wouldn't be able to tell that I had left out a massive chunk of my past. Steve threw his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into him. I laughed nervously and curled against his side, tucking my knees to my chest and resting my head on his shoulder.

We sat in silence for a long time. I finally felt comfortable being around him, knowing that we were back on the right path toward our old friendship. "I meant what I told you before, you know? I have missed you," I said truthfully.

"It doesn't always seem like it," Steve answered.

"There are plenty of days I'd like to put your head through those walls," I told him. Steve let out a bark of laughter at my honesty. "But that doesn't change the fact that you've always been my best friend. Life without you was terrible. It broke my heart to lose you both. If I couldn't have him back, I'm glad to at least have you."

"You always will. Always," Steve said, gripping my knee tightly.

I leaned up and pressed a kiss against Steve's cheek, gently pushing off of him. "Okay, I feel like we're two little girls gossiping about their first crushes. Enough of this," I said, waving at the air around us.

Steve laughed again. "You should stay tonight."

After our brief yet heated conversation, I needed to go back to my apartment for some peace and quiet. "Yeah, I don't get that option. Some of us have things we need to do," I teased.

"Like?" Steve asked.

"Working. I have a job, you know? A job that you could have too."

"I'm considering it."

"Considering?" I asked.

S.H.I.E.L.D. would be about a thousand times better if Steve worked there with me. Working there was getting old these days. "I'll get there, Vic. It's just that it's a big world out there," Steve said.

"Speaking of the world, thinking about joining it anytime soon?" I asked.

He didn't necessarily have to join S.H.I.E.L.D. right away, but it would be nice to go out to a pizza place with Steve. It would be nice to finally get a chance to go out with someone who wasn't terrified of me killing them. "I should have known it wouldn't be that easy to get out of that conversation," Steve said. We both laughed. "I know that I'm going to have to. I can't sit here and dream about the past forever. This is my life now. It's just been a little harder than I expected to get used to the idea."

He hadn't had that long to get used to the idea that he didn't live in the forties anymore. It was a different world. "It's only been a few weeks. No one expected you to adjust that quickly," I pointed out. "I just want to make sure you're not planning on making this your permanent residence."

Steve chuckled under his breath. "No. This place is nice but it's a little lonely."

"You know where's less lonely?" I prompted.

"With you in the middle of New York City?" Steve asked, filling in the blanks.

"Come on, soldier. I'll protect you. The world's not that scary," I teased.

Naturally, just as I had said that a large blackish-blue cloud formed not far from where we were perched on the couch. Steve let out a gasp as he launched himself from the couch, almost knocking me from it. Steve took a defensive position, about ready to attack our new guest when I reached up and took his arm, stopping him from getting into a fight he couldn't win. I laughed as I watched the humanoid figure form from the cloud. I smiled at Kurt Wagner as his gaze moved to Steve and me.

Kurt was hanging from the kitchen cabinet for a few moments before dropping to the ground in a true mutant form. Steve's eyes were wide with shock. I could see why he looked terrified. I likely would have been too if I didn't know who Kurt was. He looked almost like a blue devil with his spiked ears and a forked tail. Though his yellow eyes were extremely familiar. Kurt's eyes tracked over to me as he smiled, his fanged teeth peeking out from behind his lips. Steve still looked ready to attack.

I walked forward and pressed a hand against Steve's shoulder. "Calm down," I told him, turning to regard Kurt. "Hi, Kurt."

"Hey, Vic," Kurt greeted in his thick Bavarian accent. "Happy birthday."

"Thanks," I said quietly. "How did you know I was here?"

"How else?"

I smiled. "Charles." He gave away my position all the time. "How is he?" I asked.

"He misses you. He wants you to come home," Kurt answered.

It had been a long time since I had worked with the X-Men. I loved them but I had moved on. I belonged with S.H.I.E.L.D. now. "This is my home now, Kurt," I said.

If they ever needed me, I would return. But the X-Men were in my past. "We know," Kurt answered respectfully. "Just don't -"

"I couldn't ever forget about you guys," I interrupted.

The X-Men had been my first family in a long time. I would never truly leave them. Kurt smiled as his gaze finally turned to Steve. Steve swallowed thickly. "This must be the great Captain America," Kurt said with great interest.

"It is. Kurt, this is Steve Rogers. Steve, this is Kurt. He's a mutant," I explained.

"I noticed," Steve chuckled.

"We used to train together sometimes at Charles' mansion," I continued to Steve. "Charles is a very powerful mutant - he's a telepath, like me. He opened up a school for mutants to learn to hone their powers back in the sixties."

"Good to meet you," Kurt said. He leaned over and shook Steve's hand. I smiled at them, watching Steve's white hand take Kurt's blue one. Steve never did let the idea of mutants bother him. "We've always been curious to meet the world's first super-soldier. You're a mutant in your own right, but they love you."

Kurt was more interested than angry but I could see where Steve's concern was coming from. "Because they created him," I pointed out. Steve still looked shocked at Kurt's sudden comment and nervous. "Relax, we're just chatting. What are you doing here?"

"We all wanted to see him," Kurt answered.

"Should I expect the rest of the gang to show up here?" I asked.

Kurt chuckled. I couldn't imagine what this place would look like with the rest of the X-Men overrunning it. "No. The rest of them can't get in here," Kurt pointed out. I shrugged. That wasn't necessarily true. Many of them would have been able to get in with minimal effort. "Can we expect you to show up there?"

"No," I said.

"Come on. Charles misses you," Kurt said.

One of these days I would have to drop by the mansion again. "I'll come to visit eventually," I promised.

"Don't take long. We all miss you," Kurt said.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," I growled. They were all pains in the asses that I would deal with later. "Get out. You're not supposed to be here."

"Just wanted to check it out," Kurt chuckled, looking around.

"Was it all you were expecting?" I teased.

"Even more," Kurt said, looking back at Steve.

We both laughed as Kurt walked up to me and wrapped his arms around my midsection. I smiled at Kurt and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. We stood together for a few moments before Kurt released me. He looked at Steve for a moment as he grinned, his sharp teeth flashing through his blue lips. I knew that Steve was trying not to give away his nerves as he nodded at Kurt politely. Kurt's body went up in a flash of black smoke as he left the cabin to return to Charles' mansion. I chuckled as I turned back to Steve.

He was still staring at the black smoke. "Who was that?" Steve asked breathlessly.

"Kurt Wagner," I answered.

"So I've heard," Steve answered, scowling at me. I smiled back at him. "You know what I meant."

"Well, Kurt was born in Bavaria to a mutant named Mystique. You would have known her as Raven," I explained.

"The little girl from the base?" Steve asked.

"That's her. Like most of us, Kurt was shunned at birth due to his appearance. Raven was disguised as Baroness Wagner but her true identity was revealed after she gave birth to Kurt, and the pair were chased by an angry mob. They fled to the nearby falls and Raven threw the infant Kurt over the edge and fled," I explained.

"She tried to kill him?" Steve asked, horrified.

"No. She was just desperate to save herself. Raven took a path that unfortunately many of us do. Kurt was saved by his natural father, another mutant named Azazel, and given into the care of Margali Szardos, a sorceress and gypsy queen. Margali took Kurt to the small Bavarian circus where she worked as a fortune-teller as a cover for her activities as a sorceress. Kurt was raised by all the members of the circus, who had no prejudices against freaks.

"He grew up happily enough in the circus with his two closest friends, Margali's natural children Stefan and Jimaine. Stefan feared that his magical heritage may one day corrupt him, and so he had Kurt promise that if he ever killed without reason for Kurt to stop him. During his youth, Kurt exhibited tremendous natural agility and quickly became the circus's star acrobat and trapeze artist with audiences assuming that he was simply a normal human dressed in a demon costume.

"Kurt worked closely with Jimaine, and they got together not long after. Years later, the Texas millionaire Amos Jardine, who ran a large circus based in Florida, heard of the circus Kurt worked for and bought it. Jardine intended to move its best acts into his American circus. However, he demanded that Kurt be placed in the circus' freak show, where he was imprisoned against his will and drugged to remain complacent. Eventually, I came across him in a mutant fighting ring. They used to be extremely popular.

"At the time all I did was save him and help give him a name. Nightcrawler. Once he was gone I told Charles Xavier about him and that I thought he would make a good addition to the team. Kurt ran away and made his way back to Germany where he discovered that Stefan had gone mad and had brutally slain several members of a lost race of half-human creatures. Kurt found Stefan and fought him, hoping to stop his rampage, but in the course of the struggle, Kurt unintentionally broke Stefan's neck.

"The villagers of the nearby town discovered Kurt and assumed him to be a demon who was responsible for the killings. They cornered Kurt in the town and were about to kill him when they were all psionically paralyzed by Charles, who had searched for Kurt on my recommendation. He had come to recruit Kurt into his team of mutant super-heroes known as the X-Men. That's what Kurt was talking about. He agreed to join the group, but before they left for America, the two went to the Bavarian circus so that Kurt could explain to Margali about Stefan's death.

"Unfortunately, Margali was not there, and for years she held Kurt responsible for murdering Stefan. Later, she learned the truth and she and Kurt were reconciled. Kurt was also happily reunited with Jimaine, who had been living in the United States under the assumed name of Amanda Sefton. They aren't together anymore, but they do still care for each other. I've known Kurt for... oh, I don't know. Maybe forty years or so now," I explained.

"It gives you a headache just thinking about it," Steve said.

"We all have our stories," I replied. "All complicated and long and most not very pretty."

"Should I expect that to happen frequently?" Steve asked.

I laughed, crossing the room. "Sorry about them. They like to drop in unannounced. They get bored," I explained.

The mutants had never been known to have the best boundaries. "At a school for mutants?" Steve asked curiously.

He knew about my desire to one day train and protect mutants. I had never gotten there, but I was glad that Charles had taken care of them. "Yeah. Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. The only academy dedicated to teaching mutants from around the world to hone and control their powers. If you're interested, I'll tell you about it later," I said, tired from our earlier discussion.

Steve grinned. "Now that sounds interesting."

Anything to get him to stop asking me about my past. I laughed and said, "A conversation for tomorrow then."

"I can't convince you to stay?" Steve asked sadly.

It would have been nice to stay with Steve tonight but I needed to be alone for a while. "Not tonight. I've got a few things to do." In reality, I felt too overwhelmed to hang around here. I had so much hidden in my past that Steve could ask me about and I knew that it would be happening all night if I stayed here. I wasn't ready for that. I just wanted to move on. "But I'll be back tomorrow," I promised.

Steve nodded, smiling at me. "See you tomorrow."

"Call me if you need anything," I told him.

"I will," Steve said.

No matter what, I would be here in a heartbeat if Steve needed something. I pressed a kiss against Steve's cheek as I turned and walked away. I headed out the front door of the Retreat and back to my car. Steve watched me from the doorway as I climbed into my car and waved at him, pulling out of the driveway and laying on the horn for a moment. Steve shot me another wave as I slammed on the gas and roared down the road, back toward my apartment building. It was a little overwhelming being at the Retreat today.

Deep down I knew that the right thing to do would have been to admit to Steve what my past had consisted of, but I had too afraid to lose him now that I had him back. He was my best friend and I had him back after almost seventy years of being apart. I stared at the winding road as I drove full-speed toward my apartment where I was planning on falling face-first into my bed to desperately try and forget the events of the day. In the morning I could try and plan on how to make Steve forget about asking about my past.

Maybe I could get him to focus on Charles' school for mutants. He had seemed interested to learn about it. More than once I saw the flashing of police lights behind me as I shot down the road at well over a hundred miles an hour but I ignored them, instead, slipping into the minds of the officers and forcing them to stay away. They all turned back in the other direction. The last thing I needed right now was a speeding ticket. Fury would lose his mind if I got one. Or if I killed a cop because they tried to give me one...

It ended up taking me barely half an hour to get back to my apartment building. This was the only place I wanted to be right now. I just wished that I could get blackout drunk in the meantime. Unfortunately, that had never been an option. I couldn't stand thinking about the time in my life that I didn't have either one of my two best friends. Very few pieces of my life after their deaths were pleasant. Those near seventy years weren't worth it to think about. They were nothing more than a nightmare and not one that I cared to dig up.

The first thing I saw as I roared up to the sidewalk was a chuckling Brock Rumlow. I got out of the car and headed toward the lobby of the building. "You know, Fury wants you to return that," Rumlow commented.

"Fury can bite me," I snarled. "What do you want?"

Rumlow hung around far more often than I would have liked, but his team lived two apartment buildings down. I couldn't be surprised that I saw him all the time. Rumlow grinned at me and said, "What's the answer to my question?"

"What question?" I asked huffily.

"How about a date?" Rumlow asked.

A date... Was he kidding? He was still asking me for a date? The last thing I wanted to do was go on a date. I turned to Rumlow and rolled my eyes. "Rumlow, it's the same answer you've got every day for the last five years. No," I said.

We weren't going on a date. I wasn't going on a date with anyone anytime soon. I didn't date. Rumlow laughed heartily, having to run after me with my quick pace. "Come on!" He chuckled again as he bounded in front of me. I was about ready to throw him away from me. "As long as I've known you, you never accept offers for dates," Rumlow pointed out.

Correct he was. "I don't date," I said.

"Why not?" Rumlow asked.

"Not interested," I replied.

Rumlow thought on it for a moment before saying, "What about something a little more casual?"

I'd had that comment coming from a mile away. I looked at Rumlow with an even face as he raised his eyebrows suggestively. "Classy," I deadpanned at him.

Rumlow grinned. "That's not a no."

We looked at each other for a moment as I thought about it. Was it worth it? I didn't like Rumlow that much. He was kind of funny and had the occasional interesting moments. He was tough, which I did like. The longer I looked at Rumlow the more I realized that he was attractive. He was the type of person that I normally would have been attracted to. I had always known that he was good-looking. But there was also the issue that I had long ago been moderately good friends with his father.

It seemed a little odd to sleep with someone when I had been friends with their father. It might have been pushing the boundaries, though I had been known to do that before. It was odd but it might have been interesting to give it a shot. I would have been somewhat interested to see what Rumlow was like in bed. He seemed like he would be tough enough to entertain me. I would just have to make sure no one was around to ask me about our relationship, of which there was absolutely none.

The idea of sleeping with someone casually didn't bother me. I had been doing that for about sixty years. Though Bucky had been one of the only men I'd ever remained with, I'd had plenty of men passing in the night. I had meant what I'd told Steve. I was never alone. It had always been easy to find some company for the night. People already thought horribly of me. They had for almost a century. I didn't care what they thought if they knew about my comings and goings with the opposite gender.

"That's a... we'll see," I said slowly.

Rumlow gave me a brilliant smile. I knew I would regret not denying him immediately. "I'm taking that as a yes," he said. I stared at him and grabbed his shirt, yanking his body into mine. "See? Now, this I like."

"Shut up," I snapped. "We'll talk about it. And if you ever tell anyone, I'll gouge your eyes out."

Rumlow swallowed thickly as my eyes flashed black. I meant what I'd said. I would make him beg for death if he ever repeated this to anyone. "You know how to turn a guy on, Victoria," Rumlow said slowly.

"I know," I chirped, releasing him and turning away.

"Happy birthday, by the way," Rumlow called after me.

I turned back to him and smirked. "Thanks."

"Want to celebrate?" Rumlow offered.

"Not with you," I said slowly.

Potentially being with Rumlow would take some serious thought. I smirked at him again as shot a blast of flames into his hand. He gasped in pain and jumped away from me as I chuckled, turning away again and leaving. I might have been in a sour mood but hurting and harassing Rumlow did make me feel a little bit better. It had for the past five years. Rumlow called an obscenity after me and I flipped him off as I slipped into the apartment building, closing the door behind me. I went to the stairs and sprinted up toward my apartment.

On the fourteenth floor, I walked into my apartment and looked around, closing the door behind me and gently leaning back against the doorframe, letting out a deep breath. I was more overwhelmed from my visit with Steve than I had been expecting to be. Perhaps it was because this was the first time Steve had mentioned Bucky to me since he'd woken up. I knew that he was walking on eggshells around me before this. He hadn't wanted to bring it up. Now he had and it seemed to have opened up the floodgates.

I'd underestimated just how much I missed my former fiancé. I gently leaned up from the doorframe and walked into the bedroom. I dropped against the fluffy bed and stared at the pictures of Bucky sitting on the dresser. I felt my body begin to tremble as I stared at him, wishing so desperately that he was here. I wished that I could feel him at my side and hear him laugh. I didn't realize that I was crying until I felt the tear splash against my arm. I forced myself to reach up and wipe the tears from my eyes.

This wasn't the time to be upset. "You don't look happy."

My head snapped up at the teasing voice. I had been so lost in thought that I hadn't even noticed Logan walk into my bedroom. I knew that he had been in the area for the past few days but he hadn't mentioned whether or not he would drop by and visit me. It seemed that he had decided to. I scowled at him. He never knocked before he came into my house. He didn't need to. We had known each other long enough and had gotten comfortable enough with each other to walk into the other's life whenever we needed it.

"Why are you here?" I growled at my friend.

"I was in the area and thought I'd pay you a visit," Logan answered, sauntering into the room.

Whenever either one of us was ever in the other's area we always made it a point to visit the other. I'd gone to see Logan not long after Bucky's death and had continued to see him at least once every three years. We'd kept in contact with each other through our mind links even during the long durations when we couldn't see each other in person. I wasn't exactly sure what I could call Logan. He was my friend but we drove each other up the damn wall. We'd found physical comfort in the other numerous times, but we'd never been in love with one another.

"More like you want something," I commented.

Logan leaned over and grabbed the remote control sitting on the edge of my bed, turning the television to the national news. As usual, it was about Steve's reemergence. "It's been all over the news," Logan said, motioning to the screen. "Your friend seems to have arisen from the grave."

I snatched the remote back and turned the television off as Logan flopped onto the bed, kicking his booted feet up onto the white comforter. I scowled at him again. We had no boundaries with each other. "Get your disgusting fucking feet off my bed," I snarled, tearing at his ankles so hard I would have broken a normal man's legs.

"Testy," Logan teased, putting his feet back up onto the bed. "About your friend?"

"Do you have to phrase it like that?" I asked irritably.

"You've never been one to mind people's feelings," Logan pointed out.

Any argument I'd had died on my tongue. I wanted to snap back at him but he was right. "Fair," I mumbled, pushing Logan's legs to the side and placing myself next to him. His hand landed comfortingly on my thigh, higher than anyone else would have dared. I smiled weakly at him. He tucked his hand under my chin, knowing how upset I was. "Yeah, he's staying at the Retreat. It's a safe-house built by Bruce Banner a while back. I'm hoping he'll decide to rejoin society soon but I don't think he's quite ready for it yet."

Logan shrugged. "Understandable, considering how long it's been since he went into the ice."

"I know." We sat in silence for a while as Logan ran his hands up and down my bare legs, as he had always done when he was trying to comfort me without showing his soft side. "I saw Kurt today," I said suddenly.

"Elf's hanging around here?" Logan asked curiously.

When all three of us had briefly lived in Charles' mansion, Logan and Kurt had been roommates. I'd thought Charles was insane for putting them in a room together but he had told me to trust him. It turned out that he was correct. Though they hadn't gotten along at first, things had slowly changed. Logan had spent weeks insulting Kurt before finally having to work together to survive on the island of Krakoa. After that, they had gotten along swimmingly. It shouldn't have surprised me that they had first bonded over beer.

All these years later and the two of them were still best friends and still insulting each other. "Jesus, Logan. The two of you are best friends and you still can't call him by his name?" I asked him.

"No," Logan replied dully. He stared at me curiously for a moment. "What's got you crying?"

"The fact that I have to sit here and listen to you," I snapped.

"Nice," Logan growled.

We had never been polite. That wasn't in our nature. He stared at me for a moment before finally realizing where my gaze had been resting. He let out a breath as it dawned on him that I was staring at Bucky's picture. It was the one thing that was guaranteed to both make me smile and break my heart. Logan rose from the bed and walked to the dresser, laying the picture face-down on the table. I closed my eyes for a moment and brushed my tears away. Logan walked back to me and rested on the bed at my side, reaching over and placing a hand comfortingly on my knee.

He didn't speak much when he was trying to comfort someone, but his presence was enough. I reached over and took his hand in mine. "I get it," Logan said quietly.

We had both lost the person we loved the most. One of us at the hand of someone we'd once trusted and the other at the hands of our greatest enemy. "I know you do. You're the one person I know who understands it," I told him. We sat together for a moment before I rose from the bed and walked into the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. "You want one?"

"You have to ask?" Logan replied. I laughed as I grabbed a second beer and threw the bottle to Logan, who caught it and sliced off the top of the bottle with one of his Vibranium claws. I peeled off the top of my bottle and drained the first quarter of my beer, letting out a breath once I had. Logan followed me as I walked into the living room. "Tough day?"

"I'm glad to have him back, I am, but I didn't think about what having him back would entail," I admitted to him. "I didn't think about all the questions he would have and that maybe I've changed more than I'd like to admit since the forties."

"You're nowhere near that girl anymore," Logan pointed out.

"No," I agreed. We would never be those people we were when we'd first met. Too much had happened to us. It was just a pity that other people didn't see that. "But I know he expects me to be."

"It's been a long time since I've heard you that self-pitying," Logan said, not totally unkindly.

My head snapped to look at him. "That's not what I'm doing," I snapped.

"That's exactly what you're doing," Logan argued.

"It is not," I snapped back. I wasn't being self-pitying. I knew that things were tough with us but that didn't matter. I knew what to expect when I told Steve the truth. It was a shame but I didn't feel bad for myself. I walked further into the living room, closely followed by Logan. "If you're here to be an asshole and call me out, I need you to go leave."

Logan scoffed. "You're not going to tell me to leave."

"Oh, yeah?" I half-asked.

Half the time we hung out together one of us ended up throwing the other out. We could only tolerate each other for so long. "Because you know I'm right. You know that you're feeling bad for yourself. Boo-fucking-hoo," Logan continued. I scowled at him, wishing that he would be quiet but knowing that he was right. "You did some bad shit that you've never been ashamed of until your best friend came back from the dead."

"Knock it off. That's not the truth," I growled.

My past was a nightmare but I had been ashamed for a long time. Since well before Steve had returned. At least, I liked to think of it that way. "Sure, it is. Remember the fun you used to have when you took a new mission?" Logan asked.

"It was never fun, Logan. It just made me feel better," I countered.

"Is that the lie you told your friend?" Logan asked.

"Fuck off," I barked.

"That's not very nice," Logan teased.

"I hate you," I growled.

It was half-true. I hated him half the time that we were together. Logan chuckled under his breath as I walked back over to the refrigerator to get myself something to eat. "Are you planning on offering me anything to eat?" Logan called.

"No, I hope you starve," I called back.

Aggravating son of a bitch. I couldn't for the life of me understand why I didn't kill Logan. It wouldn't have been simple but I could have figured it out. "How's he feeling about what you've done?" Logan asked, switching gears as he found another way to annoy me.

I grabbed my leftover sandwich from the other day and took a large bite out of it. "What do you mean?" I asked through a mouthful.

Logan scowled at my feigning ignorance. "You know what you did for all those years. You know how it felt for you," he insisted. I stared at him for a moment, wishing that it wasn't true. I wished I had felt some sympathy for what I'd done. "I hear your friend's supposed to be a pretty stand-up guy. How's he going to feel about the way you acted for so many years?"

"Steve doesn't need to know about that," I insisted.

We could get over the past. All we needed to focus on was the present and what the future was going to bring. "You're going to keep that hidden for the rest of his life?" Logan asked disbelievingly.

"Yes," I deadpanned, scowling at Logan again. He grinned as he kicked his booted feet up on my table... again. "Steve puts me on a pedestal, just the way Bucky did." Logan's gaze softened, almost imperceptibly, as my voice cracked weakly on my former fiancé's name. "He can't know. He'd never forgive me."

"So, you're just going to lie to him forever?" Logan asked.

"I'm not lying. I've just chosen not to disclose the full truth," I reasoned.

"If someone else does?" Logan offered.

There were very few people who would have been stupid or suicidal enough to tell Steve the truth about my past. "Then they're taking a twenty-story trip to the pavement with a short stop," I insisted, hearing the growl in my voice. I would kill whoever tried to tell Steve the truth. "Steve doesn't need to know the truth and he's not going to know the truth. My past is in the past. Time to move on."

"How long do you think you can keep that secret?" Logan asked.

"I'd guess Steve has about two hundred years left," I said, scowling at my reflection. Two hundred years seemed far away but I knew it would be over sooner than I thought. "Shouldn't be too hard."

"To keep a secret that big?" Logan asked disbelievingly.

"If I'm working to keep my secrets, it won't be hard at all."

"You'll slip up. You or someone else."

To be fair to him, I had more of a chance of letting the truth slip than anyone else did. "Maybe," I admitted. "I'll handle it if that does happen."

Judging by the look on Logan's face, he had realized that he wasn't getting through to me. Not by teasing me and not by trying to get me to see the flaws in my plan. Logan rose from the couch and took the rest of my sandwich from my hands. I groaned as he downed the remainder of my sandwich in one bite. I rolled my eyes at him as he turned and walked to the window. Rumlow at the rest of the S.T.R.I.K.E. team were still outside the building. They had been trying to keep the reporters at bay while news of Steve's revival had captivated the world.

It didn't bother me if Logan knew that I was thinking about spending some time with Rumlow, but I knew I would never hear the end of it from him. I wasn't the innocent woman I had been in the forties with only one partner, the man I had promised myself to. There was now a long list of men, very few of whom I cared for even in the slightest. Logan was one of the only ones. Because of our tightknit past together, we had always shared our midnight exploits. Most of the time it led to brutal insults.

"Who was the guy out there?" Logan asked, motioning down to Rumlow.

So, he had seen me. I rolled my eyes. "Now you're stalking me?" I asked. Logan turned from the window to stare at me, which I knew he would do until I told him what he wanted to know. I sighed and decided to give up on the fight. "Brock Rumlow. He's a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who's been trying to ask me out for about five years now. He's infuriating so I mostly try to tune him out."

Logan snorted. "He wants to -"

"No!" I shouted, knowing that Logan had never been one to mince words. He would have told me exactly what Rumlow wanted. "No, I don't need you to finish that thought. I know what he wants."

"Planning on going for it?" Logan asked.

"None of your damn business," I snapped.

Logan snorted again. "You'd be disappointed anyway."

"Why's that?"

My heart sank at the look on Logan's face. I would regret asking that. "Because you know who you'd be comparing him to." I barked out a laugh at his confidence. I supposed it was fair. Logan walked over to me and took my chin in his rough hand, tilting it up and pressing a small kiss against my mouth. It almost brought a smile to my face. "Chin up, kid."

Even after seventy years... "You've seen me naked. Stop calling me kid," I barked.

Grins turned up on both of our mouths as Logan leaned further in front of me, his body surrounding mine. His thick arms fell on either side of my body as I felt a slight stirring in my stomach. I had never come close to being in love with Logan (perhaps a brief crush in the sixties was as close as I'd come to that with him) but he had been one of my best friends for a long time and had always been good for comfort. We were prickly people who didn't get along with others, which meant that we were perfect for each other.

"How about another round?" Logan offered, wriggling his eyebrows.

My gaze narrowed. "Are you kidding?"

Logan laughed under his breath as he leaned in so close that if either one of us moved an inch we would be connected at the mouth. "Don't act high and mighty. You've never said 'no' before," he teased.

Well, that was uncalled for. "Don't be an -"

I never got the chance to finish my insult. Of course, that was his point. He didn't want to hear whatever cruel thing I had to say to him. Logan leaned down and captured my mouth in a heated kiss. Any complaint I'd had toward him died on my tongue. This was probably what I needed after having such a high-strung day. I needed a chance to relax (or maybe wind myself up a little bit more) and I knew that Logan was the perfect way to do that. Though he would have also backed away if I'd ordered him to.

Despite Logan's tough exterior and rough demeanor, he respected what his partner did or didn't want. He always had, even from the first kiss we'd shared after a few difficult days. Any consideration I'd had to push Logan away didn't last long. This was what I needed and Logan had always been good for a romp around. He reached under my legs to pick me up from the couch and slam me back against the wall, the drywall crumbling to pieces underneath me as my nails tore open his shirt and skin. Without Bucky in my life, this was the closest to comfort I could find.

Steve's P.O.V.

Steve Rogers was wandering around the Retreat, getting dinner ready for the night. He had desperately wanted Vic to stay for dinner but he had also recognized that today had been a little overwhelming for her. She was still having a hard time trying to deal with the loss of Bucky and having thought she'd lost him too. It was strange enough for him to be back in the world, he couldn't imagine how she felt having her best friend back after having thought he was dead for almost seventy years.

It was tough getting to know Vic again after they had been apart for so long. Particularly now that he knew she was hiding something. He would eventually get her to talk and open up, but he knew that it would take time. It had always taken Vic a long time to open up to people, even the people she loved. They needed to spend a few weeks getting to know each other again. The buzzer at the front gate sounded suddenly and Steve turned back. Vic was the only person who had been visiting him over the past few weeks.

The door opened a moment later and Steve grinned. He had been hoping she would decide to come back. "Forget something?" Steve called back to her.

There was no immediate response, which was strange for her. She normally would have immediately responded with a curse. Steve turned back curiously and was shocked to see Director Fury standing in the doorway. That wasn't who Steve had been expecting. "Sorry for dropping in unannounced," Director Fury said, walking slowly toward Steve, who nodded back at him. "If I'd said I was coming by, Victoria would have made sure she was here for it."

"Sir?" Steve asked, unsure of what Vic's presence had to do with anything.

Director Fury acted as though Steve hadn't said anything as he walked into the kitchen and leaned back against the counter. "How have your conversations with Victoria been going?" Director Fury asked. Steve didn't respond immediately. "I hear she's here most days."

"She drops by a few hours every day. She spends the night a few times a week," Steve said noncommittally.

Director Fury nodded. "What have you two been talking about?"

Something didn't sit right with Steve. He didn't like the way Director Fury was pushing the conversation. He was setting something up, Steve just didn't know what it was. Ultimately, Steve decided not to delay the inevitable. "I'm sorry, Director Fury. What's this about?" Steve asked.

"I just wanted to see how it's been catching up with your old friend," Director Fury said, folding his arms. Steve didn't trust the tone of his voice. He wanted something more than to check in on their relationship. "I wanted to see how much she's told you about her life."

Steve thought about it for a moment. He didn't know what to tell Director Fury, so he settled on something Vic would have said. "It seems like it's been pretty standard stuff. She's mentioned that not much interesting had happened to her. It seems like she's mostly focused on working for S.H.I.E.L.D. since she came back after her hiatus," Steve explained simply.

It was a plain answer that would keep Vic from setting him on fire. But Director Fury didn't seem to agree. "Her hiatus?"

He would have thought that her hiatus would have been something everyone had known about. "Yeah. She told me about her disappearance for a few years. She was trying to protect our old friends until she was convinced nothing would fall back on them. She came back to work for what would become S.H.I.E.L.D. after that," Steve said, immediately wondering if he had said too much.

Judging by the look on Director Fury's face, Steve assumed he had said too much. He knew Vic well enough to know that she would have said something nasty to Director Fury to get him to leave her alone. Was there a reason she didn't want people delving too deep into her mind? Except for her mutation, before it had become common knowledge, Vic had never been that secretive. She'd never cared what people knew about her before. Until now, that was. Something had changed. What was it?

"Did she say when she started working for S.H.I.E.L.D?" Director Fury asked slowly.

Shouldn't he have known what year Vic started working for S.H.I.E.L.D.? Steve wasn't sure when Director Fury began working for S.H.I.E.L.D. but he thought they had always worked together. "Not the exact date. Uh... The early fifties, it seemed like," Steve said awkwardly.

Director Fury hummed. "Interesting."

"Sir?" Steve asked.

Maybe Steve was wrong. Maybe she had worked for them in the late forties. Or maybe it had even been the early sixties. "Victoria didn't start working for S.H.I.E.L.D. until the late eighties," Director Fury explained.

Steve had been trying to keep his face from giving away any emotion but he couldn't help it. Director Fury's comment didn't make any sense. Vic had told him that she had begun working for S.H.I.E.L.D. just a few years after initially vanishing from the public eye. Granted, she had said that her work was on-and-off for a while but Director Fury was saying that Vic hadn't worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. at all until over thirty years after Vic had said she had. Steve didn't understand what she would have lied for. Was Director Fury mistaken? Or had Vic misspoken?

Steve shook his head slowly. "I don't understand," he admitted. "She didn't start working -?"

"A few weeks ago when you had first come out of the ice I warned Victoria to tell you the truth," Director Fury interrupted. Steve's stomach churned in knots. He had allowed Director Fury to lead him directly into the conversation he had been gunning for. Steve knew that he should have told the director to stop and leave but he couldn't. He was so curious about Vic's past. "I've given her a few weeks to do that and I can see now that she won't. She's going to lead you on. You deserve to know what your friend has done over the last seventy years."

As much as he wanted to know, Steve knew that it wasn't Director Fury's place to tell him about her past. "It's up to Victoria to tell me what she has or hasn't done," Steve insisted.

Director Fury nodded thoughtfully. "That is true. But don't you want to know what she's done?" Steve didn't answer. He wanted to know, but he wanted to try and keep trust in their friendship and that would be destroyed if he asked Director Fury to tell him about her past. "You wanted to know. I heard you ask her. This isn't about her lying about her employment history. She's got a dark past."

"I know about her past," Steve said.

Director Fury shook his head. "Not that past. She's not the woman you knew in the forties. She's changed. If you want to know just how much she's changed or what she's done..." Director Fury trailed off as Steve stared at him. Tell him to get out. Forget about the offer. But Steve did no such thing as he watched the director take a file filled to the brim with paperwork and drop it on Steve's coffee table. It slammed against the glass. "You may want to read that," Director Fury said, motioning to the file.

"What is it?" Steve asked, looking down at the file.

"That'll tell you everything you need to know about your friend," Director Fury replied.

It was like a see-saw going back and forth in his mind. He didn't know whether he should look at the file or throw it in the trash. Finally, Steve settled by saying, "I already know everything I need to know about Victoria."

"Well... just in case," Director Fury offered.

Steve and Director Fury stared at each other for a moment as the director nodded, walking off and leaving the file on Steve's coffee table. Steve looked at it for a long time, unsure of what to do. Half of him wanted to toss it in the fireplace and forget about it. Anything Vic wanted to tell him was something she should have done on her own time. But there was something about the lie Vic had told him about having worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. for almost sixty years when in reality she had barely worked for them for twenty-five. What had happened in those missing decades?

He had heard the rumors when he was in S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters before being moved out to the Retreat. He had heard them talking about their fear of Vic and how people avoided her like the plague. He had just thought it was because she had always been intimidating. But there was something about the way they had looked at her. There was a genuine terror in their eyes. What had she done for all those years? Slightly ashamed of himself, Steve picked up the overflowing file and began delving into the past she had been trying so hard to hide.


	2. Chapter Two

The high-pitched screams echoed through my mind as I tried to block them out. Nothing worked. Not putting up a wall and not trying to get into their heads to silence them. They were all present. The sharp scream that had torn from Bucky's throat as he'd fallen to his death. The horrified sobs that Steve had given at the sight of losing his best friend. The deafening cry that had come from the depths of my sternum as my fiancé had lost his life. All because I hadn't been paying enough attention and hadn't moved fast enough.  
Suddenly, the screams stopped and I was plunged into an eerie silence. It didn't last long. "Why didn't you help him?" Jessica Barnes asked, appearing a few feet from me, tears building in her blue eyes.  
"It was you," Justin Barnes added, his voice trembling with rage.  
"You could have saved him," Rebecca Barnes whined, her voice breaking.  
All I could hear was their accusations toward me, not long after Bucky's death. They like everyone else had blamed me, just as I had asked them to. "No, I couldn't. I tried but I couldn't," I whispered.  
All I had wanted was to save my fiance. I had been so close. A little boy, only eight-years-old stepped forward. His eyes, grey from death, were fixed on me sadly. "But you could have saved me," he said, his squeaky voice shaking.  
"It wasn't personal," I whispered.  
"Yes, it was," he insisted.  
"Monster," the young boy's mother snarled.  
"I only became what you always said I was," I defended myself weakly.  
"Do you see how correct we were?" the mother asked.  
"No..." I whispered. I wasn't the monster. I had only become what they had insisted I was. "No..."  
They weren't right about me. I couldn't let them be right about me. I had fought so hard to try and be the good guy. I had spent so many years of my life doing what was right as I had tried to be the hero. Steve and Bucky had been so proud of me. I could have kept moving in that direction, but I hadn't. I had somehow turned into the person others had always said I was. I had proved everyone I had ever hated correct and I had proven my best friends wrong. They would have had every right to be ashamed of me.  
Why couldn't people have seen what they were doing to be with their words? I looked at the young boy and frowned. His guts were physically removed from his body, his ribs broken, and turned out at odd angles. I glanced at his mother, whose throat was slit down to the bone of his spine. I could see the holes in her hands and feet that had once held her in place. As I looked in the other direction, I saw my parents staring at me with even looks. My mother's body was burned and blistered; her hair was missing in large chunks.  
My father was at her side, his appearance very similar. I swallowed as I looked at them. They were looking at me just as they had when they were alive. The crowd surrounding them grew and grew as more people appeared. Men with their eyes burned out of their sockets. Women who were missing limbs. Children with their bodies torn to shreds. They all stared at me, silent but still blaming me for what had happened to them. As much as I didn't regret what had happened to them, I found my heart rate increasing. It felt like it stopped when I turned and spotted Bucky.  
The once-handsome military man looked nothing like he had when he was alive. His eyes were dull and his skin was blue. His right arm had been torn off from the impact of his fall. All that remained was a bloody stump just below his shoulder. His blue-tinged face was bloodied and bruised from the fall. He stared at me with horrified eyes, the only emotion I could read from him. I couldn't stop myself from moving toward him. It felt like he had torn out my heart as he backed away from me with fear in his eyes. I tried to walk toward him again, but he once more backed away.  
"What have you done?" Bucky asked, his voice full of disgust.  
"What I thought I had to," I replied quietly.  
"How could you?" Bucky asked.  
"I was hurt!" I gasped, tears building in my eyes as my throat closed.  
"Get away from me," Bucky hissed, backing away.  
"Bucky -"  
"Go!"  
It was the angriest I had ever heard him. The man who had once loved me and had once asked me to marry him, now looked somewhere between disgusted and terrified with me. I couldn't handle him hating me. He had to forgive me. I tried to follow Bucky as he turned on his heels and ran from me. I sped up to grab him by the shoulders but he sped up, too. I sprinted after Bucky for a moment before he collapsed to the ground. I slid forward on my knees to his body, but it was too late. His heart had stopped. Once more, I was too late. He was dead, and this time he had died hating me.  
The scream from my dream crossed into the real world as I bolted upright in my bed with a sharp scream. The sudden release of pressure that had been building in my chest caused a massive blast of energy to radiate through the room. The windows couldn't stand the pressure from the blast and they cracked into pieces, shooting to the ground below. The lights in the room had all blown out and the mirror was shattered into shards. I stared at the bits of glass and cracked drywall throughout the room as I let out a long breath.  
It would take me at least an hour to fix the windows and drywall. Fury would be pissed that I had to buy myself another set of windows for my bedroom. "Shit," I groaned, leaning onto my knees.  
"You do that often?"  
I jumped, turning to face Logan, having briefly forgotten that Logan had stayed overnight. He had one arm folded behind his head and the other was laid on the bed in between us. Unlike most men, he didn't look that surprised by my reaction. It wasn't the first time I had ever woken him up by doing something destructive on accident. Logan let out a deep breath as he leaned up and looked at me. He looked a little annoyed that I had woken him. Logan wasn't much of a morning person; nor was he an afternoon or evening person, if I was being fair.  
"I forgot you were here," I told Logan, running a hand through my knotted hair.  
"Thanks," Logan huffed.  
"We both know you've said far worse to women," I pointed out.  
"And you've said far worse to men," Logan replied.  
"Done worse too," I teased.  
His lips turned up in a violent grin. We chuckled under our breath as his gaze turned to the broken window. His grin softened at the sight. He knew what had happened. "Nightmare?" Logan asked.  
"Of course," I said.  
We both got nightmares. I had once been woken up a few decades ago by one of his Adamantium claws through my thigh; an involuntary reaction from a nightmare of his. "I didn't know you still got them like that," Logan said.  
"They're not as frequent as they used to be, but I still get them," I admitted.  
There had once been a day when I'd gotten the nightmares every night. It had lasted for years after Bucky's death. These days, I now got them once every few weeks. Logan nodded, wrapping an arm over my shoulder. I leaned my head into the crook of his neck. We had been close for a long time and Logan had long been a source of comfort for me. We were always friends, but we would always keep each other at a slight distance; a result of the losses we had both experienced over the years.  
This was getting a little too in-touch with my feelings for me. "I have to get moving soon," I said, pulling out of Logan's grip.  
"You want breakfast?" Logan offered.  
"You don't eat breakfast," I said.  
Neither one of us ate breakfast. "I'm trying to not be a hit-it-and-quit-it kind of guy," Logan said.  
There was no doubt in my mind that Logan was a hit-it-and-quit-it kind of guy. But I was that way too. He was the only man I returned to and vice versa for him. I snorted ungracefully. "You'll come back," I insisted.  
Logan scowled at me as he grabbed my chin and pressed a hard kiss against my mouth. I giggled softly as he released me and whacked me over the back of the head at the same time. I was still laughing as he jumped out of my bed, buck ass naked. "Only 'cause you'll call me," Logan shot back.  
It would only be a matter of time before one of us would come back to the other. "Make a pot of coffee, will you?" I asked, ignoring his knowing smile. "You know where everything is."  
"Sure."  
I only let out the breath I'd been holding when Logan left my bedroom with his jeans in hand. I stared after him for a few moments as my gaze shifted over to the cracked drywall. I would have to fix that later. Logan and I had always been known to break things whenever we'd had one of our notably loud midnight romps. Neither of us was gentle. We cared for each other but had never been in love. We would always be protective of one another, but there were no true feelings. That was the difference between my relationship with Logan and the one I'd had with Bucky.  
When I had been engaged to Bucky we would lay in bed together all night long and chat away about the little things - the things only we knew about each other. When we would be physical with each other, it was sweet and romantic. It was playful. We were always able to laugh and otherwise be completely ourselves. My time with Logan was different. We always bantered and were nasty to each other. Our nights together weren't romantic in the slightest. They were rough and intense. We took out our frustrations on each other.  
It wasn't often that Logan decided to stay with me throughout the night, so I usually wasn't confronted with my feelings in the morning. I was able to forget that he had been here. Now I could hear him rummaging around in the kitchen. The noises turned my stomach. It had been nearly seventy years since Bucky's death, but I still felt the burning guilt in my stomach after spending the night with someone - especially when I was only doing it to try and get my mind off of something else.  
It seemed silly to still feel guilty for being with someone else so long after my fiancé's death, but it would always be there. Bucky was my first love and the only person I had ever felt that way for. I threw the sheets off of myself and grabbed a towel as I walked into the bathroom. I wasn't willing to think about Bucky any longer. He was gone and had been for a long time. I had to understand that and I did, for the most part. But there were days when his memory was like an earworm; I couldn't shake him, no matter how hard I tried.  
My reflection in the mirror showed that my eyes were deep blue. I rolled my eyes at myself, forcing them to go back to yellow as I turned to the shower and ran the water so hot that it would scald a normal person. It felt like I needed to boil my skin off. I closed the bathroom door behind me as Bucky's picture that was sitting on my dresser was directly in view. It was a reminder of who I should have been waking up next to. It was a reminder of everything that I had lost all those years ago.  
I walked under the water stream and immediately saw the steam coming off of my arms. I stared at my reflection in the glass stall. My eyes were dull yellow as they were most days when I woke up. It usually took me a while to get out of my head and shake the traumatic memories away. I washed through my hair quickly and washed away the memories of the prior night as I jumped out of the shower, wrapping my towel around my chest. As I wiped the fog off the mirror, the door opened and Logan walked in. He was wearing his jeans but no shirt.  
Logan fanned the steam out of his face. "Damn it, it's hot in here."  
I flashed him a playful smirk. "Sorry."  
Logan walked up to my side in the mirror and whacked me over the back of the head. "You're not that hot."  
"Neither are you, honey," I shot back.  
We gave each other wicked smirks as we prepared ourselves for the day. Logan walked into the far corner of the bathroom to finish getting ready as I walked back into my large closet and started getting changed. I pulled on a pair of torn jeans and a simple black tank top. I stared at myself in the floor-length mirror for a moment before deciding that I was going to put on my leather jacket too. I pulled on a pair of black riding boots and tied back my hair. It was what I usually wore this time of year as it was starting to get chilly in New York.  
Once I was satisfied with the way I looked, I walked back into the living room and saw that Logan was already in the kitchen. He had already gotten changed. He was wearing a very typical outfit for Logan; a white t-shirt, brown leather jacket, old pair of jeans, and beat-up biker boots. He was pouring our two cups of coffee. I walked over to the couch and plopped down. Logan met me there, handing off one of the mugs of black coffee. He had his mug in one hand as he threw his other arm over the back of the couch.  
We sat together in silence for a moment as I threw my legs over Logan's lap. "So, where are you heading?" I asked, finally shattering the silence. "You normally don't come to see me unless you're planning on vanishing for a while."  
"Back to Canada, I think," Logan said.  
It was one of the places he had spent the most time over the past few decades. He liked the quiet isolation. "You're going back to being a lumberjack, huh?" I teased.  
"It's quiet out there," Logan said, confirming my theory for why he was leaving again. I nodded understandingly. There were plenty of years that I had lived well out of the public eye. "It's not like being here, in the middle of the city."  
"It's not my favorite place in the world but if I'm going to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. this is the only place I can live," I admitted.  
While I was as heavily involved in S.H.I.E.L.D. as I was, there was nowhere else I could live. "Have you thought about leaving?" Logan asked.  
"Sure, plenty of times," I admitted. I hated living in the middle of New York. There were too many people here and very few of them enjoyed having me here. "I came close a few times too, but I don't think I could leave now. Not with Steve back."  
"You think he's going to join?" Logan asked.  
"At this point, I think this is all Steve knows. He knows how to be a soldier. That's the life he always wanted anyway," I said. It had been the life he wanted and it was the one he had gotten, but I knew that he had been fulfilled in the forties. We had both been ready to settle down and we had both lost that option. "Any chance he had of the simple life was left back in the forties."  
"People like us - people like him - we don't get a simple life," Logan said.  
"We could. You had it," I pointed out.  
"And I lost it, just like you did," Logan replied.  
"Yeah," I muttered.  
We weren't built to live the simple life. Logan and I exchanged a long look. It was something that had helped us bond so well over the years. We had both lost the loves of our lives. We had taken out our overwhelming anger on others when we had lost our respective true loves. I took a long drink from the coffee mug, partially hiding my face. Part of me wanted to crawl back into bed and pretend that the world didn't exist. But I had to do what I always had; get up and figure out what I was supposed to do next.   
"You'll call when you get settled, yeah?" I asked.  
"Sure," Logan responded unconvincingly.  
I smiled at him. I knew that he wouldn't call and he knew that I wouldn't track him down. We would find the other when we needed it. "Take care of yourself out there," I told him.  
"Of course." Logan reached over and tapped me in the chest. "Let those walls down. Your friend loves you."  
"How do you start a conversation like that?" I asked guiltily.  
We had so much to discuss, so many things that had happened over the years, and I didn't know how to start explaining my life to Steve. "At the beginning... and you go from there," Logan said.  
It would be a long story if I was going to start at the beginning, but that was the only place I could start. I had told a complicated story to Steve before; I had once told him that I was a mutant. Now I was going to have to face telling him another complicated story. I smiled again. Logan was right and I knew that. I needed to tell Steve the truth about my past. I just needed to take some time and figure out how to tell my best friend the truth. I knew he wouldn't like it. I let out a deep breath and patted Logan on the knee.  
"I guess we both have hard times coming for us," I muttered.  
"I'll see you around, Vic," Logan said.  
"Bye, Logan."  
We exchanged little half-smiles as Logan stood from the couch, knocking my legs off to the side. He leaned down and pressed a kiss against my temple, placing his half-drunk coffee on the table. We stared at each other for a while as Logan nodded once and turned to leave. I turned to face the television, refusing to look at him but listening as Logan walked to the door and gently closed it behind himself. I knew that it would be a few years before I heard from him again. I let out a deep breath as I leaned my head back against the couch.  
As the clock on the wall chimed away the new hour, I let out a deep breath. It was time for me to leave. It was already mid-morning and I normally would have been at the Retreat already. I supposed that I could think about what to say to Steve on the ride over. I had to start coming up with an explanation. I would have lots of time to think during the ride. I needed that time to think about what was going on. I needed that time to think if today was the day that I was going to tell Steve the truth or if I needed more time to prepare.  
Things had become so difficult over the last few days. I hadn't expected Steve's return to be as tough as it had been so far. I knew that I would have some hard questions shot my way and I knew that I would either have to tell the truth or work extremely high to keep up my lies. Fury had been right from the beginning. Logan was right. I was going to have no choice but to tell Steve the truth. I knew that my only chance at Steve's forgiveness was if the truth came from me. He couldn't find out from someone else.  
Though I knew what the right thing was, I still wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. I wasn't sure how a person could broach that subject. I couldn't come right out and admit the truth. There was no easy way to say the truth. I grabbed my wallet, slipping it into my back pocket, and headed out of my apartment and downstairs. I walked through the lobby of the building where the flashing lights started up. The photographers had returned to their usual spots. I slipped my sunglasses down my face as I headed out onto the street.  
There was a lot of chattering from the reporters around me that I ignored. They were all asking the same questions they did every morning. How was Steve? Was he going to come out of hiding soon? Was he planning on joining S.H.I.E.L.D.? Today the questions didn't bother me as much as they normally did. Today I was only thinking about what step came next. What was I supposed to say to Steve? How did I begin that conversation? It was an impossible task. I climbed into the car and the engine roared to life. Then, the horrible reality set in.  
What if it didn't matter what I said to Steve? What if I tried to make him understand my actions and begged him to realize that I had been under tremendous strain? What if he didn't care? The things that I had done were unforgivable. I had always known Steve to be the person to forgive anything I'd said or done, but this was something more. This wasn't a little thing. I had ruined families and ended lives. What if this was the one thing I couldn't forgive? What if this was the moment I lost my best friend for good?  
Having Steve safe and alive but hating or not caring for me would have been even worse than losing him to death. Knowing that he was alive and close to me, close enough that I could speak to him, but I was unable to. Knowing that he wanted nothing to do with me. How would either one of us have been able to take that? We were the only things the other had. My professional life was satisfied but my personal life left much to be desired. We were supposed to be hurting from what had happened but happy to see each other. I didn't know how to now handle the truth.  
I'd been so happy to have him back but I hadn't thought ahead to this part. There were very few things in the world that scared me. The only thing that scared me right now was the possibility that I would lose Steve forever. It was one thing to lose someone to death. It was a horrible thing but you knew that there was nothing you could do to change things. Losing someone to years of monstrosities committed at your hand - something the other one could never forgive - would be heart-wrenching.  
I knew that I was going to have to tell Steve the truth before he joined S.H.I.E.L.D. If I didn't, there was no doubt in my mind that someone there would eventually let my past slip. Fury had already been nudging me in the direction of telling him the truth. He was probably the person who was the most likely to spill the beans. He would have his reasons but part of it would surely be to force me out of my comfort zone; it would force me to be vulnerable and confront the past I had tried to forget.  
It wasn't necessarily that I felt guilty about everything I had done in the last seventy years. I knew that many of my actions were wrong and overstated, but some of them had been justified. What wasn't justified were the innocent lives that I had taken or what I had done after I had exacted my revenge on the people who had wronged me. All the years I had spent with careless fighting and selling my services to the highest bidders. Wreaking havoc on a world that had long since turned its back on me.  
My stomach churned as I thought back to all those people I had once known who had begged me to stop hurting them. The constant phone calls from my friends, begging me to come home and quit what I was going. Howard, who had always found out where I was living, appearing out of thin air to tell me the hard truths, hoping he would eventually get through to me. Chester, who had attempted to get through to me with love. Peggy, who had promised that she would protect me as long as I came home.  
They had never turned their backs on me, just as they had promised. I tried to blink away my memories of the screams of my victims. Men and women and children. I didn't care enough to save any of them. No matter what they had said to me or what they had looked like. Those who had begged me to forgive what they had once done to me. Those who had tried to convince me that they had never done anything to me. Those who had promised their life's savings if I walked away and spared their lives.  
I felt the shortness in my breath as I turned off the main highway and headed down the less-traveled roads that led into the woods. I was in the middle of a long stretch of road that would lead me to the Retreat when my hands started to tremble on the steering wheel. I couldn't continue down the road. I had to stop. I had to take a minute to myself. I slammed on the brakes and steered the car to the edge of the road. I felt myself gasping for breath. I was afraid. I couldn't bring myself to tell the truth, but I knew what I was risking if I didn't tell him the truth.  
The sound of the engine was pounding in my head, so I shut the car off and pushed the driver door open. I jumped up, almost shredding the seatbelt in half as I sprang into the grass. I collapsed into the dirt, feeling the tears building in my eyes and the bile forming in my throat. I had lost so much since the prime of my life in the forties. I couldn't lose even more than I already had. I couldn't lose the only person I genuinely trusted that I still had in my life. I didn't know how to bear telling Steve the truth when it meant that I may never speak to him again.  
Something had to give. I already knew that I wanted Steve to know the truth. I didn't want to have to spend the next few hundred years hiding such a massive part of my life. I wanted to know that Steve forgave me and that we could start over. After all, I wasn't that person anymore. Maybe he would be able to bring himself to forgive me. He had always been one of the most forgiving people I had known. If I could take the time I needed to explain myself, maybe he could forgive me. I would talk as long as he needed me to.  
Just like when I had told Steve that I was a mutant, I tried to plan the conversation out in my head ahead of time. I spent nearly an hour pacing back and forth along the edge of the road, planning the big pieces of the story that I needed to tell him along with my explanations and reasoning for what I had done. It would be a messy story and wouldn't always make perfect sense, but it was all I could think of. I wasn't satisfied with the plan I came up with, but I knew I never would be. All I could do was tell the truth and hope for the best.  
Once I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anywhere else with my thoughts on the side of the road, I climbed back in the car and started the engine again, heading back down the road, feeling myself getting more nervous than I had been in many years. Steve was the only person who could still make me nervous. As I drove toward the Retreat, I felt my hands begin to sweat. It was something that never happened to me. Almost half an hour passed before I arrived at the driveway to the Retreat. I swiped my badge at the security gate and drove up to the house.  
Steve wasn't waiting for me in the driveway. I stopped in front of the Retreat and shut the engine of the car off. It was already well into the afternoon. Normally, Steve would have been outside doing some yard work; his version of busywork. Not today, which was surprising as the afternoon weather was lovely. It seemed like it should have been a stormy day for what I was preparing to do. I walked up the driveway and toward the front door. There was no sign of Steve. I debated knocking but decided against it. Steve would know that I was on my way.  
I walked into the Retreat, still wondering where the hell Steve was. Normally, he met me in the front yard or the living room. He was always happy to see me. I wondered immediately if something was wrong. That was the only reason I could think of that he wouldn't be here. I walked into the living room and noticed an uneaten bowl of cereal. He was around but something was keeping him busy. I turned back to go outside and see if Steve was out there. Maybe I had missed him. As I turned back, I heard something slam on the table.  
I whipped around to see Steve standing behind me, his arms folded over his chest, looking very upset. "Hey, sweetie," I chirped, trying to ignore the tenseness in his shoulders. "What's up?"  
"What the hell is that?" Steve hissed.  
Profanity. That was strange coming from him. I looked down long enough to see a large manila folder that was overflowing with papers and photographs. For a moment, I thought it was his. I wasn't sure how he got it, but I supposed it didn't matter. I was about to explain that S.H.I.E.L.D. kept files on every person of significance when I realized that the file wasn't his. It was mine. Judging by the look on his face, he had read everything in it. Every secret I'd wanted to keep from him. My heart began pounding in my chest as I fought to keep an even look on my face.  
This was why he hadn't come out to see me. I knew it. He had been in here all morning, reading my file and wondering how to approach me about it. I figured that Fury was the one to bring the file to Steve, which sent a spike of seething hatred through my chest. It was supposed to be my job to tell Steve the truth on my own time. Now he had seen it without me getting a moment to explain myself. He must have thought horribly of me. There went my plan to tell him the truth first. I smiled tersely as I crossed around the coffee table.  
"That is a file, Steve. Come on, they had those in the forties," I said teasingly. The comment didn't sit well with Steve. He looked as unimpressed as I'd ever seen him. "I think they call them manila folders."  
"I'm serious," Steve snapped.  
"So am I. They did have them," I responded carelessly.  
"I'm not talking about the file, Vic. I'm talking about what's in it."  
My heart began pounding against my ribcage. There went any hope that he hadn't read it yet. "Come on, Steve. That's paper," I teased, unwilling to broach the subject. "That's been around since Ancient Egypt. It began as papyrus when an unknown man began pounding down two stems put together of the plant -"  
"Knock it off," Steve barked. "You know what I'm talking about."  
Yes, I did. But I'd had a long habit of shutting down whenever things got tough. I didn't want to talk about my past. Not now and not ever. Not when I knew what the look on his face was. "You read the file. You know what it is," I said shortly.  
"They've marked you an international threat," Steve commented.  
That didn't sound right. I turned around the table and walked back toward the file. The papers had been shuffled from Steve reading them but I could see that he was right. I had been labeled an international threat. My lips turned up in a bitter smile. "International threat," I repeated, running my hands over the file. "That's offensive, I used to be marked a global threat."  
"I'm not kidding," Steve barked.  
"Neither am I," I shot back.  
There was a day and age that anyone on the planet would have run from me in terror. "Is it true?" Steve asked.  
"The truth is subjective; mine could be very different than theirs," I said.  
We exchanged a long look; my eyes were glimmering menacingly as Steve's were hardening. Steve met me at the table and laid a hand on my shoulder, almost threateningly. It was a little surprising, coming from him. "Tell me," Steve snarled.  
My eyes briefly flicked to Steve's hand as a growl erupted deep in my throat. Steve had never been the kind of person to try and threaten someone else, especially not someone he deemed a friend. I loved Steve to death, but I wasn't going to tolerate anyone trying to stand over me. It had been a long time since I had let someone walk all over me.  
"You sure that's the route you want to take?" I asked Steve, my teeth grinding together.  
"I want the truth, however I can get it," Steve said.  
All of our truths were different. Mine wasn't the same as theirs. I shoved Steve's hand off my shoulder as I walked away. "It's right there in that file, Steve," I said, throwing my gaze over my shoulder.  
Steve looked shocked that I was giving up so easily. "You're not going to try and deny it? You don't want to defend yourself?" he asked.  
"What would the point be? You've already made up your mind," I said, my throat tightening. He had already decided that the file told the whole truth. I turned sharply on my heels to meet his eyes. "I don't need to read your mind. The disgust is written all over your face." My voice wavered slightly as I tried to fight back the tears. I'd known that he would be horrified at my actions but it didn't stop the bitterness from creeping up in my chest. "Not going to deny it?"  
No, of course, he wouldn't. He had every right to be disgusted. "What the hell happened?" Steve asked quietly.  
He must have been upset. He didn't use profanity unless he was furious. "I'd lost everything," I said, my throat tightening again. "I was hurt and all I wanted was for others to hurt."  
"Do you remember the last thing I said to you before I went into the ice?" Steve asked.  
"Sure. You told me that I had nothing to be sorry for," I said, repeating what his last words had been.  
It wasn't what he meant and I knew it. I just wanted to throw it back in his face. Steve glared at me as my eyes glittered with malice. "That's not what I meant and you know it," Steve snapped. I nodded carelessly. "I told you to stay with the guys. Peggy, Chester, and Howard. You were supposed to stay with them. You were supposed to be with them -"  
"You think I could stay with them?" I hissed, interrupting Steve's rant. "I couldn't. All I would have done was draw military attention to them. I saved them by walking away."  
"And damned yourself?" Steve asked, his voice rising in anger.  
"What else is new?" I barked. "I've always been the monster in their eyes; I was always going to be the monster."  
"You could have -"  
"What was I going to do?" I shouted, my voice rising to match Steve's dull roar. "Live in complete solitude for the rest of my life? For the rest of eternity? I was angry. I had pent-up energy that I needed to expel."  
"By killing everyone in sight?" Steve asked.  
"Not everyone. Just those I deemed deserved it," I replied pompously.  
"Is what's in here true?" Steve asked, motioning back to the file.  
"In some way or another, I suppose," I said carelessly.  
"I want the truth, Vic. I want to know what you did."  
"Read the fucking file, Steve. That's what I did."  
Even if I came up with an excuse for everything I had done, he wouldn't believe me. "No, I want to hear it from you. I want to know how you brought yourself to kill a child and keep going even after you'd done that," Steve said, the disgust in his voice evident.  
I'd known that was the one thing he couldn't forgive. "I didn't want to keep going! When you and Bucky died, it felt like my heart had been ripped out! I felt like I had lost everything. I couldn't be around the only people I loved. All that would have done was damn them. They would have lost their only chances at real lives," I snapped, my voice wavering slightly. I'd loved them but I had to stay away to save them. "So, I went into exile. I didn't try to exact my revenge. Not at first. I'd lost so much and all I wanted was for everything to end."  
"So, you decided to end someone else's life?" Steve asked.  
"No, Steve, I tried to end mine!" I shouted.  
The lights in the room flickered as shock waves from my body blasted through the room. Shards of glass shot from the light bulbs as the walls - lined with Vibranium - cracked. Steve was blown off his feet and shoved back onto the table, which was now cracked from his weight. His eyes were no longer filled with disgust. They were filled with shock and sadness. My stomach churned as a tear slipped from my eyelash, splashing onto my cheek. I turned in the other direction. I hated the tears that were building in Steve's eyes.  
It wasn't the way I had meant for that dark part of my life to come out. That was one part that I wished could have remained hidden forever. I hated the look on Steve's face. I hated seeing the pity mixed with disgust. I didn't want to tell Steve how low I had gotten. I didn't want anyone to know that I had gotten to the point where I hadn't seen the light. I hadn't expected this conversation to go well, but it was going far worse than I could have imagined. We sat in silence for a long time as scraped the toe of my boot against the floor.  
Steve's voice was much lower when he finally brought himself to speak again. "What happened?"  
A bitter smile crept across my lips. "What always happens when someone tries to take their life? They feel like they've gotten as low as they can and don't see the light anymore. That's where I got."  
"I'm sorry, I didn't realize," Steve muttered.  
As much as I loved Steve, he could be a bit self-centered just as I could be. Unlike me, he didn't realize it. "That doesn't surprise me," I replied.  
"Did you, uh, did you ever -"  
"Try again?" I asked, knowing where he was going with it. "No, I found another suitable outlet." His eyes hardened again at my brutally honest comment. "It wouldn't have mattered. I couldn't kill myself. Nothing worked and I tried everything I could think of."  
"Vic -"  
"Whatever I did to those people for all those years, I tried it on myself first. I hated myself. I blamed myself for what had happened to you and Bucky. I took the blame; in the media and my mind. I'd lost everything. I tried to see the light and find a reason to keep fighting but I couldn't. So, I tried to put a bullet in my brain," I said honestly, making him cringe. "I woke up a few seconds later, reconstructed brain and all. I tried to bleed myself like a pig; the Chronicle replenishes itself too quickly. Even if I decapitate myself, it grows back. It takes a lot longer than a hand, though."  
Steve cringed. "You did all of that?"  
"Sure. It got a little funny after a while, actually," I said, chuckling at the almost silly ways I had tried to end my life.  
"That's not funny to me," Steve barked.  
We stood in silence for a while as I reached up and brushed away another tear. I hadn't thought about that dark part of my life for so long. I had once tried everything I could think of to kill myself, but nothing had worked, no matter how hard I had tried. Each time I had come back to life, angrier, and angrier. There had been no use in trying to end my life. All it had done was waste energy. I had realized after a few days that it was pointless and had instead focused my energy on hurting the people who had hurt me.  
Steve allowed me a brief period of silence to try and recover from the memories of my many suicide attempts. Eventually, though, the conversation came back where I knew it would. "This isn't the end of the conversation," Steve said quietly, much more gently than he had earlier. "I want to know what you did for all those years."  
"You read the file. You know what happened," I insisted.  
"I need to hear it from you," Steve said.  
"Why? What difference will it make? Do you want me to start crying because I feel bad about killing a child? I don't, Steve," I said honestly. It wasn't my proudest moment, but I didn't feel bad for what I had done. I had promised his death and I had lived up to that promise. "I warned you years ago that this is who I am."  
"No. Not this," Steve said, pointing to me. "The girl I grew up with would have never done this."  
"Want to bet? The girl you grew up with killed her parents," I said.  
"That was an accident," Steve said.  
"You saw what I did at the Hydra bases."  
"What you did out there wasn't for personal gain. You were keeping people safe by taking out the bad guys."  
"Did it never occur to you that I enjoyed it?" I asked him.  
Killing someone had always brought me some form of joy. It was a release of the energy that I could always feel building. It was building now, too. "Vic, I've always known that you had a dark side," Steve said. I rolled my eyes. That was the understatement of the century. "I've always known that you're quick to get a temper and violent, but you're also the kind of person who will never hurt someone she loves."  
"And I never did," I told him. I never would have hurt any of the people I loved. "When the occasion called, I always came back to the people I loved."  
"What brought you back to S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Steve asked.  
"It wasn't me feeling shame, I'll tell you that," I said pointedly.  
"Vic -"  
"You're looking for an apology and you're not going to get one," I said.  
Steve wasn't getting an apology. Those I had hurt never got one and he wasn't going to get one. "No, I don't want an apology," Steve said. I raised an eyebrow. I didn't think he would forgive me without seeing some remorse. "I want you to tell me the truth. I don't want to hear it from other people and I don't want to read about it in a file."  
It would be an exhausting conversation, even more so than it was now. "It's been seventy years, Steve. I meant what I told you yesterday. I'm not going over everything that's happened," I said.  
"Give me the highlights, then," Steve prompted.  
"No."  
"Why?"  
"Because you don't need to know," I snapped.  
It was because I didn't want to face the truth with Steve. "That's not a good enough reason," Steve snapped.  
"It's the only reason I need," I hissed. It was my past and my life. If I didn't want to tell him, I wasn't going to. We stared at each other, intensity blazing in both of our eyes for a few moments. "I'm going home. I need some time to think."  
"No, you're not walking away from this conversation," Steve called as I turned away.  
"I've had it with this conversation," I snapped.  
"You don't get to walk away just because things are getting tough -"  
"I'm not walking away because the conversation is tough!" My voice rattled the walls of the Retreat as I turned back to Steve. "You think I've never had to deal with a tough conversation? I have, Steve. Hell, how do you think I felt telling you the truth about what I was? I'm walking away because of that, right there!" I shouted, motioning to his eyes. The look in his eyes was the one I prayed I would never see from him. "It's that look, right there. That's the look I can't bear. That look of... hatred."  
Steve's eyes turned down, watering slightly. He shook his head, obviously swallowing a lump in his throat. "I don't hate you, Vic. I won't ever hate you," Steve insisted.  
"You will," I said, my voice cracking. "If I tell you everything... you will."  
Steve shook his head. "No, I won't. I love you. Always have, always will."  
He had been able to forgive so much but I didn't know if he could forgive this. I struggled to breathe as my throat seemed to close up on me. I couldn't bring myself to tell him just how low I had gotten at the lowest point of my life. I wanted to pretend that that period of my life had never existed. It was over, after all. Steve did love me and I knew that, but I wasn't sure if he would look at me the same way he used to once he had seen everything I had done. It wasn't fair. He didn't understand just how much I went through after their deaths.  
Steve walked up to me, hesitating to touch me at first. We didn't speak or make a move to do anything. Long minutes passed before Steve leaned forward and placed his hands on the back of my shoulders, pulling me into him. I didn't move toward him at first. My body was too tense and I couldn't relax. But my emotions quickly got the best of me and I gave in. I was too weak. I began crying softly as my body relaxed slightly. I leaned down and rested my head in his shoulder, my body trembling with dry sobs as Steve's arms tightened around me.  
A long time passed where we didn't speak or move. There was nothing to say. All we needed was to be near each other and remember that we loved each other, no matter what. We remained wrapped together forever, Steve keeping his arms wrapped protectively around me as I sobbed into his shoulder. I wondered if we would ever move past this or if our relationship would remain tense and strained forever. Steve leaned down and pressed a kiss onto the top of my head as the clock chimed four o'clock. We had spent a lot longer arguing than I had expected.   
We didn't speak during the hours that passed. That seemed to lead to arguments. Instead, Steve led me into the kitchen and we sat down at the stools. He got up a little while later to make a pot of tea for us to share. Steve and I sat at the barstools as we sipped our drinks. We didn't speak and I was glad for it. I had nothing to say to him. I didn't know what I could say to make things better. My plan to tell him the truth and do it slowly was shot to hell. Now, I had to suffer the awkward conversation to try and get our relationship back to normal.  
During the silence, I listened to the wall-mounted clock slowly tick away the minutes. I didn't know what I was supposed to say to Steve to make things better. I loved him and wanted him to understand what I had done, but the more I thought about my actions, the more I realized I'd had no excuse. My actions were monstrous and the only reason I had done what I had was that I was angry and I had enjoyed it. Fighting was what I did best and my anger was always overwhelming, but it wasn't a good enough excuse for me to have done what I had.  
It was closing in on six o'clock when Steve finally spoke again. His voice was slow and cautious. "It doesn't have to come out all at once, but let's start talking about things, Vic."  
"Steve, please, I thought we were done with this conversation," I begged.  
"We're not going to be done with it until I get the truth," Steve said, not unkindly.  
"You have it -"  
"Out of you."  
"This is never going to end," I said breathlessly, placing my head in my hands.  
Steve shook his head, placing a hand on my arm. "It will, once you tell me the truth. You know that we have to talk about it," Steve said. Of course, but that didn't make the conversation any easier. "Come on, can't we just get it over with?"  
"No!" I barked. "I can't -" I stopped myself short. I knew what to do. If I couldn't bring myself to say it, I could show him. If he wanted to know the truth of what I had done for all those years, I knew the perfect way to get it out. I wouldn't have to say a single word. "Okay, you want the truth, I'll give you the truth."  
"Okay," Steve said, looking relieved.  
"Get up," I snapped, hopping up from the stool.  
"What?" Steve asked, surprised.  
"Get up," I repeated. "We're going somewhere."  
"Where are we -?"  
"Don't talk. Get up and come with me," I ordered.  
Steve didn't understand what I was planning. I sent him a heated glare so that he knew I wasn't joking around. Steve rose from the stool and I motioned him to follow me out of the kitchen, through the living room, and onto the front yard of the Retreat. Steve headed toward my car but I held out my arm to stop him. I didn't want to stomach a nearly four-hour car ride with him. We could be where we needed to go within seconds if I flew us there. I took Steve by the arm and gave him a slightly angry but still reassuring nod.  
"Where are we going?" Steve asked.  
"To get your answers," I said. "Hold on."  
We exchanged a quick look as Steve nodded at me. I built up the pressure under my feet and waited a moment before taking off. We looked at each other as I launched us into the clouds. Steve gasped but didn't scream like Bucky had whenever we'd flown together. I shot us through the trees and over large and small cities alike as we flew toward Washington, D.C. A few minutes passed before we arrived at our final destination. Steve clearly didn't understand what we were doing as I lowered us into Central Washington, D.C.  
We landed carefully on the steps of the Smithsonian Institution. Steve looked around, obviously confused, as I led him into the museum. It was closed to the public as it was after five-thirty, but I could get in without issue. I took Steve's arm and yanked him forward. We headed into the museum and I walked toward the escalator. The Captain America exhibit was undergoing a renovation now that Steve had returned, but my portion of the exhibit was still intact. We were almost to the escalator when a security guard stepped out.  
"Hey!" the guard, a heavy-set man in his early fifties shouted. "You two can't be here."  
Without looking at the man, I held up my hand and flicked my wrist gently to the side. The man collapsed to the floor as Steve stared at him in shock. "Relax. He's asleep, not dead," I said tonelessly.  
Steve nodded blankly as we stepped onto the escalator. He looked around curiously as we passed the banners with his face plastered all over them. "What are we doing here?" he asked.  
"You wanted answers, that's what you're going to get," I said coldly.  
Though Steve was looking around, I faced dead ahead of me as we walked into the Captain America exhibit. Steve looked shocked to see the pictures and paintings of himself lining the walls, both before and after his transformation. We walked past the plaques that explained his life and the memorial for Bucky. I hesitated for a moment to look at it. I sucked in a deep breath as we kept moving, passing the painting of our team and heading into the darkened room at the back of the exhibit, passing a content warning sign that Steve stared at.  
"Enjoy the exhibit," I snarled, taking Steve by the arm and shoving him into the darkened room.  
Steve's P.O.V.  
Steve stumbled forward from Vic's shove. He tripped over his feet for a moment before steadying himself and turning back to her to ask what she was showing him. It was too late. He could already see her long white-blonde hair swishing around the corner as she vanished. He figured that she was going to let him look around himself as she kept to her thoughts. Steve let out a deep breath as he turned back. She wasn't going to talk. She wanted him to figure out her past on his own.  
Steve was angry with her for all she had done, but more than anything, he felt terrible for Vic. Part of him wanted to be angry with her, but he loved her. She was his best friend and he could see the conflict in her eyes - she was angry but she was hurting, too. More than he had initially thought. The lights in the room Steve was standing in came up, illuminating the exhibit and he nearly fled the room in horror. He understood now why there was an age restriction sign outside of this portion of the exhibit. It was... horrifying to put things nicely.  
It almost made Steve wish that he hadn't asked her about her past. He wished that he hadn't opened her file. He wished that he could have just enjoyed having her back. But he was here and getting the answers he'd wanted. He looked at the exhibit; black lettering printed on a blood-red glass background. Splatters of fake blood lined the back walls as decoration. Steve realized why there were very few pictures of Victoria in the main hall. This was the portion of the exhibit that was dedicated to her. His eyes tracked up to the title: A Traitor to Her Nation.  
A large image of Victoria's silhouette filled the background of the main wall of the exhibit. Her figure was wearing the same black S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform he had seen her in the day he'd come back. Her hair was floating around her body. The only color on her silhouette was her blazing red eyes. There were weapons hooked onto different parts of her body; each to serve someone a different brutal death. Steve placed a hand on the edge of the glass. Was this the person she had turned into? Was the file he had read about her true?  
There were photographs posted along the walls. Many of them were of crime scenes. Each photograph was more and more graphic than the next. They went through her life. Some he had seen before; school photographs, the remains of her childhood home, her parents' bones having been uncovered from the rubble, and the ruins of Stryker's laboratory. Each had a caption describing what someone was looking at. Steve scowled at the caption that described Vic as a monster who had murdered her parents; those same people who had tried so hard to kill her.  
At least a small portion of the exhibit was a lie. Steve already knew that. Many of the photographs on the wall were ones he had never seen before. There were bodies torn to shreds of men, women, and, to his horror, children. It was just as Vic had said before; it didn't matter how old someone was or their gender. She would come after them. The mutilated body of one little boy almost made Steve puke. Crying families were mourning the deaths of their loved ones. Piles of bodies in damaged buildings. Woods burned to a crisp.  
Some of the men in the photographs Steve recognized. He spotted the corpse of William Stryker in one of the photographs. Steve walked toward it. She had gone after him. His chest was ripped open and it appeared that his heart was missing. She had taken his heart... There were memorials in photographs near the one of Stryker's corpse; fellow military men, friends and family, and even President Roosevelt had recognized Stryker as a good military man with a passion for science. Steve knew the monster he had been.  
A few videos were running in separate corners of the room. He recognized a video of Johnathan Harper. Steve's former classmate looked like he was in his late forties as he spoke to an interviewer, recounting the violent tendencies she had always experienced. Johnathan told the story of Vic breaking his knee, explaining that the attack had been unprompted. Johnathan was sure to place his cane in the center of the frame. Steve growled at the video. He had seen the memory. Steve knew that Johnathan's friends had attacked her first and that was why she had reacted.  
Many of the videos were of people who had known Vic as a child. There were a few interviews filled with people they had gone to school with - many of them told the interviewers that she had been an outsider with no friends. Other former classmates said that they had always known there was something wrong with her. All of them said that she was known to snap at people with no prompting. Steve knew that everything they were saying was lies. This exhibit was specifically built to make Vic look like the bad guy.  
Steve was surprised when he turned to see a video containing three people he knew very well. Jessica, Rebecca, and Justin Barnes. Bucky's siblings. The video looked like it was taken shortly after Bucky's death. All three were crying in the grainy video as they remembered their brother. Steve was shocked as they began talking about Vic and Bucky, saying they had been concerned about her at first but had eventually warmed up to her. He didn't understand when they said that they couldn't believe she would have killed the fiancé she claimed to love.  
The words echoed in his head. Killed him? Steve stared at the video as he tried to think of anything they could have meant other than the obvious. Vic hadn't killed Bucky. It had been an accident caused by a blast from a Hydra gun. If nothing else, Steve was the one who should have been faulted for his death. Steve's head was pounding as he turned to the mini-biography painted on the main wall. Vic had wanted him to see this. Steve imagined that this was the part of the exhibit that she had wanted him to see.  
Steve's eyes scanned the wall as he read. The beginning he had heard before. Vic was born a mutant and her parents had tried to keep her safe from the world and teach her to hone her powers. As Vic had said, they were always desperate to protect their reputation, even if it was a blatant lie. The biography claimed that she had hated her parents and burned them alive as they were trying to help her, leaving on foot and befriending two young families from whom she had hidden the truth about herself. That part was true.  
The biography claimed that she had used her powers to hold the families hostage; that she had forced both his and Bucky's families to believe that she was good. Steve shook his head. Bucky had fallen in love with her from the moment he had laid eyes on her. Steve had warmed up to her instantly. They had formed a bond with each other almost immediately and their families had liked her too. Vic had done nothing to make them believe her. She had been too scared out of her mind to force them to believe anything.  
So much of the biography was a lie. It made her out to be a villain from the time she was a young child. It continued with claims that she was a horrible classmate, injuring and belittling her fellow students. Steve scowled. That was the way they had treated her. It then mentioned Stryker coming to take her away to hone her powers and learn to be a hero. It didn't mention that torture she had gone through at his hand. It made Stryker out to be a hero and it took pity on him when it said that Vic had eventually turned on him and killed his men.  
Most of the next few paragraphs told the truth of the years that had followed. She had made friends with Colonel Phillips, she had joined the Army and eventually met their friends. It did mention that she had taken care of them and had helped in the fight against Hydra, though it insisted that she had attacked the United States at any chance she got and that she had been forced to not cause complete devastation during their missions. But she had been so careful to not injure innocent people. The real confusion came when he reached Bucky's death.  
The wall claimed that she had thrown Bucky to his death from the train, with no inclination as to why she had done it, other than her enjoyment of hurting people. What genuinely confused Steve was that the wall claimed that their friends had all backed up the story, insisting that she had killed him. It even said that she had been the one to kill Steve. It said that she had been the one to rewire the Valkyrie and send it into the ice. She had wanted the world to go without a savior... Steve shook his head. She had been desperate to save him.  
He then came to the rest of her life that he had been clueless about. Vic had reportedly vanished for a few months after Steve's death as the 'truth' of her actions had circulated the globe. People had almost forgotten about her, but then things had changed. They'd begun finding violent crime scenes around the world. Each death was able to be linked back to Victoria - some were men from Stryker's lab while others were scientists who had once worked with or for her parents. Some had even been former classmates.  
Sometimes it was the person who had hurt her who had been killed. Other times it was their families and loved ones. It hadn't taken long for the world to discover that it was Victoria who was now coming after the people who had once hurt her. Steve remembered seeing and hearing about the list of people she had wanted to kill before nature had taken them. It seemed that she had been striking through the names one at a time until she had wiped her list clean.  
Victoria had then reportedly joined a gang of other mutants. There were still debates over whether those mutants were good or bad, but there was a consensus that many of them were dangerous. The mutants had tried to remain in hiding though sometimes they were spotted in public, usually leaving massive casualties and damage in their wake. There followed a nearly ten-year gap that Victoria hadn't been seen much in the public eye, though many deaths and attacks had been attributed to her.  
Then, in the sixties, there was another emergence from her. It seemed that Victoria had lost all allegiance to anyone and had instead begun offering her services to the highest bidder. She had become emotionless, according to the few people who had interacted with her and survived. They claimed that she had nothing left besides her skills, so that was what she had relied on. That was what she had done until the late eighties when she began working as a shadow recruit for S.H.I.E.L.D. The timeline fit just as Colonel Fury had said.  
Victoria had started by faking an alliance with a foreign entity to gain information for S.H.I.E.L.D. before taking them down. She was able to do that for two years before committing fully to working for S.H.I.E.L.D. They had then taken her in and gave her a second chance at life. S.H.I.E.L.D. began shooting down the long-believed lies about her killing Steve and Bucky. The warrant for her arrest was eradicated due to her service in recent years, though trust in her was still nonexistent. Many people still believed she would one day snap.  
Steve's body felt about fifty pounds heavier than it had when he had first entered the Smithsonian as he turned to leave. He had read enough. Now he needed to hear it from Victoria as he knew that at least some of what he had read was a lie. He wandered out of her section of the Captain America exhibit and saw her standing in front of Bucky's memorial. Steve let out a deep breath as he looked at his best friend with a new light. He shouldn't have pushed her so hard. Underneath all of that hatred and rage and humor, there was a woman who was still hurting.  
Vic's eyes were deep blue as she stared at Bucky's memorial. Steve walked up behind her, his footsteps silent and not speaking, though he knew that she was aware he was there. Steve stepped up and looked at the video she was watching. It was what appeared to be a video from the war. Steve was standing with Bucky and Victoria in the video. Bucky's arm was around her shoulders as Steve stood on his other side. All three were laughing at something Bucky had said; Vic's hand with the engagement ring was placed on Bucky's stomach. Steve smiled at the video.  
"I don't even remember what we were laughing about," Steve said quietly.  
"I do," she replied slowly, not looking away from the monitor. "He told us that he didn't know why he liked either one of us; we were so pompous toward him."  
Steve smiled. He did remember that day. He finally looked away from the video and back at Vic, who suddenly seemed much smaller. "How much of it is true?" Steve asked.  
"In its entirety? None of it," Vic said. Steve nodded. He had figured that much. "In some capacity? Seventy percent, give or take. There are lies and truths in each part of the biography."  
Seventy percent. That meant that there was a chance that she hadn't done some of the worst of what had been written about her. "The biography in there said that you were the one to kill us," Steve said. Vic nodded blankly. "It - It said that S.H.I.E.L.D. has denied those rumors for years but that it was still the generally accepted theory. How did that even start?"  
"It was me."  
"What?"  
"I started that rumor."  
Steve couldn't think of a good reason she would have had to start that rumor. "Why would you do that?"  
"The world was determined to make me the villain. When I lost you two, it meant that I had lost my two greatest protectors. You were the only people the world would have listened to. Any future I'd had was gone. Any chance of having a family or retiring was gone. I couldn't hide forever. I couldn't let the people who loved me give up their lives to try and give me a chance to have one. I knew that word would get out about your deaths and there was one common link in them. Me. President Roosevelt would use it as his leverage to keep me as the villain."  
It suddenly made sense. She had allowed herself to take the blame to ensure that the rest of their friends could live their lives. "So, you took matters into your own hands," Steve said.  
"Yes," Vic whispered. "If it meant that they could have their lives back, it was worth it."  
"They wanted the best for you. I can't believe they would allow you to take the blame," Steve said, shaking his head.  
There was no way that Peggy or Howard would have ever allowed her to take the blame for Bucky and his death. Colonel Phillips would have defended her to the death. "They didn't do it without persuasion," Vic said, her eyes flashing white.  
"You forced them to lie," Steve said, the truth dawning on him. She nodded. "That must have broken their hearts."  
"It did, but it was the right thing to do," Vic said.  
"They never tried to convince you otherwise?" Steve asked.  
A bitter smile crept across her lips. "Plenty of times," she explained. Steve knew that there was no way they would have allowed her to lie without trying to fight her on it. "They came to visit me each time I was around and they could track me down."  
"You never let them go back on their word?" Steve asked.  
"What would have been the point? The world had already gotten their version of the truth and was never going to believe anything else. I let them tell the truth eventually, but it was in the nineties when I was working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and most people thought it was us trying to convince the people to believe that I was on their side now. Some people thought they were just becoming senile too, considering they were in their seventies and eighties."  
He had almost forgotten that their friends were no longer in their twenties and thirties. It had barely dawned on him that they were likely no longer around. He hadn't brought himself to be able to ask her what had happened to them. Steve's head was spinning with the truth. There were so many things he didn't understand. He didn't understand how the world could have been so quick to condemn her. He didn't understand how her life had spun out of control so quickly after he had gone into the ice.  
The one thing Steve genuinely didn't understand was how so many lies could still be surrounding her. This was a museum. It was the museum that most people thought of when they heard about history. He couldn't believe that they would publish so many things that were blatant lies. Did they genuinely believe the lies or were they trying to promote the government's agenda about Vic? Steve couldn't tell if he was angry with her or if his heart hurt for her. It seemed to be both. She had done some horrible things but she had been treated like a walking plague, too.  
"I don't get it, half of what they said is a lie," Steve told her.  
"Yes, it is. But history is written by the victor," Vic explained. They stared at each other for a moment. "You look like you have a million things to say."  
"I do and I don't know where to start," Steve said honestly.  
"Start at the beginning," she suggested.  
There was one question weighing on his mind. "Who was the kid?" Steve asked.  
Vic let out a humorless laugh. "How did I know that you would ask about him?"  
"He's a kid, Vic."  
"I'm aware he was a kid," she snapped. "I've always told you that I don't care who someone is. I don't care if it's a man or woman. Child or adult. If I have any reason to go after you, I will."  
Steve was a little disturbed by the angry tone of her voice. "What was your reason?"  
"Do you remember when I showed you the memories of my time in Stryker's lab?" Vic asked. Steve nodded slowly. It would have been hard to forget those memories she had shown him. "Do you remember the warning I gave Joshua, one of my trainers?" Steve nodded again. "That was his grandson."  
Bile rose in Steve's throat as he thought about the memory she had shown him. He remembered when she had taken him and Bucky through her memories and shown him, Joshua. Steve remembered the chill that had settled over his bones when he had heard her warning. She would hang his daughter's corpse over his bed and paint his home in his grandson's blood. She had wanted to leave him alive to watch his family die because she refused to let him be at peace. She had done exactly what she had told him she would.  
"You lived up to your promise," Steve said.  
A tear ran down her face; he knew it was from the tone of his voice. "Yes," Vic said. Steve stared at her with some pity in his eyes. He wiped the tear away as she pulled back. Her face hardened a moment later. "I won't apologize for what I did."  
"I'm not asking you to," Steve said honestly.  
He knew that he could never imagine what she had gone through. He would never know what it had felt like to be her. He would never know what the past seventy years or her life was like. He didn't know what it was like to be raised and grow up around people who hated you. He would never know what it was like to be tortured beyond human endurance. He loved Vic to death. She meant the world to him. He wanted to forgive her and knew that he would, eventually, but he needed to understand what her past had been like first.  
"Tell me what happened," Steve prompted.  
Vic's tanned face turned pale. "I don't -"  
"You want me to forgive you," Steve interrupted. She hesitated a moment before nodding. "I can't do that unless I know what happened. I've seen the best of you and I've promised you that I will still love the worst. I need to see it."  
She hesitated for another moment before nodding. "Okay."  
"What are you so afraid of?" Steve asked her.  
Her gaze softened as she looked Steve in the eyes. "That look in your eyes. The look in Bucky's eyes. Our friends. All of you always looked at me like you had me on a pedestal," Vic said. Steve nodded. He had always looked up to her. She had been the one to show him what he was capable of. "But I've seen that look in people's eyes fade when they realize what I've done. I've gotten used to it, but there are a few people in the world that I can't stand seeing that look from. You're one of them."  
The guilt hit Steve hard. She wasn't sorry for what she had done but she didn't want to and felt like she couldn't lose him. She was just afraid of how he would react. "Is this why you didn't tell me earlier?" Steve asked her. "You thought I would walk away from you."  
"Of course."  
"You're not losing me. You're not," Steve promised.  
He would never walk away from her. He couldn't. "If you see it -"  
"I'll at least know the truth. You don't have to hide anything from me, Vic," Steve said. This time she allowed him to brush the hair back from her forehead. "I love you. I always will."  
"Even with everything I've done?" she asked.  
Steve nodded his confirmation. "Even with everything you've done." He wasn't thrilled with what she had done, but he couldn't bring himself to throw away their friendship. "I just want to know. I don't want you to have to feel like you have to keep things from me."  
Vic took a few deep breaths. "Do you want to see it?" she asked him.  
Steve hesitated for a moment. He knew it would be a disgusting memory, but he wanted to see it. "Yes."  
She must have seen the hesitation in his eyes as she hesitated herself for a moment before offering her hand. Steve took it as they met each other's eyes. He nodded his confirmation that he was ready to see this part of her past. "Take a deep breath," she instructed.  
It felt like the air had been sucked from Steve's lungs as he was plunged back into her memory. Steve hated traveling into the past with her. It made him feel like he was going to suffocate. Once he had recovered, he saw that Vic was at his side, her now-gray eyes fixed on the large house in the distance with a dull stare. The house ahead of them was beautiful but he felt the sense of unease in the air around them. A car door slammed behind them and Steve turned back. Vic remained focused on the house.  
An older man ran forward in horror away from his car. Steve saw an early-model car phone hanging off the receiver. Steve realized that the man was one of Vic's old trainers, Joshua. "Dottie! Martin!" the man cried.  
Steve felt his throat tightening with nerves. He knew what he was about to see; the threat that Vic had once given Joshua. Steve was glad he hadn't eaten yet today. The older man ran forward, screaming for his daughter and grandson to come to him. As Joshua ran past them, Vic began walking after him. Something in her movements was almost robotic. He figured that this was a hard memory for her to relive. Steve followed Vic at a slight distance and took a huge breath before walking into the home.  
He was almost blown back to his knees by the metallic smell in the air. Steve recognized it immediately; blood. It would have been hard to mistake it. The home was soaked in it. Blood was coating the walls and floors. It looked worse than any battlefield Steve had ever set foot on. Vic gave no hint of emotion as she walked through the blood. Steve began moving forward with bile rising in his throat as they walked into a bedroom in the rear of the house. Steve gasped, his knees nearly giving out as Joshua began screaming.  
It would have been hard to mistake what he was screaming about. The room was red; blood was splattered against the floor, furniture, and walls. Joshua was on his knees, too stunned to say or do anything. The memory version of Victoria was sitting on the blood-soaked bed, staring at the floor. She almost looked like she had gone swimming in it. Her eyes were completely black with red cracks forming on her face. She did not move to indicate that she had seen Joshua walk into the room, but Steve knew that she was acutely aware of what was going on.  
Steve's gaze moved to his Vic - almost unable to believe that they were the same person - who had still not indicated any emotion. Steve looked up to the rest of the room. A woman who appeared to be in her early thirties was crucified over the bed. Shards of metal ran through her hands and feet, nailing her to the wall. Her throat was slit to the bone. A boy who looked about eight was on the floor. He had been opened from his gut to his groin, his ribs broken, and turned up to the ceiling, leaving his internal organs open to the world.  
Steve jumped in surprise as the old Victoria spoke. "They begged for you."  
She only looked up to meet Joshua's eyes at that moment. Joshua was hyperventilating as he pulled himself toward his grandson. "Mar - Martin. Buddy, come on. Look at me. P - Please," Joshua begged.  
"It's too late, Joshua," Victoria said.  
"No! No!" Joshua sobbed, looking up at his daughter's corpse. "Baby..."  
"You know, you see a person's true colors in their last moments. Your daughter was a coward. She sobbed and cried and screamed. It was very aggravating," Victoria said, no trace of emotion in her voice. "Your grandson had the potential to be a good man. He didn't cry and tried to comfort your daughter, the pathetic mess she was. Your daughter was no loss to anyone. You won't be either."  
"You - You..." Joshua gasped.  
"You all like to pretend that you're special. I bet you believed that your daughter was magnificent and that your son was going to be a gift to the world. The truth is, when opened up, you're all the same. Red," Victoria growled.  
"You evil..." Joshua began.  
But his voice died as he tried to come up with an insult. Nothing was good enough for what she had done. Joshua's mouth dropped open in a deafening scream of both mental and physical pain. Steve blinked back tears as the old Victoria stared at him without the slightest trace of emotion on her face. "I know how you feel. I've known loss in more ways than you can imagine," she told him.  
They finally met each other's eyes. Joshua dragged himself toward his grandson's body, puking up bits of bile. The old Victoria watched him with mild interest. She reached into the pocket of her uniform and chuckled a small handgun at Joshua, who stared down at it. It took Steve a moment to realize that she wasn't giving it to Joshua to try and kill her. She was giving it to him so he could kill himself. Joshua looked at the gun and took it, rolling it over in his hands. He met Victoria's eyes as she watched.  
The old Victoria nodded at him, her way of telling him that death was the only way out of this situation. He had already lost the only family he had left. She watched as Joshua raised the gun to his temple. Steve gulped nervously as Joshua placed his finger on the trigger and swallowed, closing his eyes, forcing tears down his cheek. Joshua pulled the trigger and the gun made a loud clicking noise, but no bullet deployed. Of course. That was the final part of her warning. She wouldn't let him die.  
Joshua dropped the gun into his lap, sobbing. "What you're feeling right now, it's only a fraction of what I've felt my entire life," Victoria told him. She stood from the bed, stepping over Joshua's crumpled body. She stopped a few inches from him and spoke with her back still turned to him. "My pain is constant and sharp and I don't hope for a better world for anyone. I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. You're just the beginning."  
"How could you?" Joshua sobbed.  
Victoria stopped walking, turning back to look at him. "I don't break promises," she said, turning back. "Goodbye, Joshua."  
The old Victoria walked past the modern-day Vic and Steve without any trace of emotion on her face. Steve and his Vic followed her out of the house. Steve sent one look back at Joshua. He was laying at his grandson's side, grasping for his body. It was no use. Both of his family members were turning grey in death. Joshua looked up, screaming like a banshee at the top of his lungs. Steve grimaced as he walked out with Vic. They watched as the old Victoria stopped outside and turned back to the house for a moment, smiling at the sound of Joshua's scream.  
They were shot back to reality without warning as Steve stumbled back from his Victoria. Like in the memory, there was no emotion on her face. "How did it feel?" Steve asked her.  
"Hollow," she answered honestly. "I thought it would bring me some joy. Some sense of relief, at least."  
"Did it?"  
"No. But I didn't know what else to do."  
"So, you kept doing it," Steve said.  
"What else was I going to do?" Vic asked, her voice taking on a defensive tone again. "I didn't have friends or a family anymore. I couldn't put the few people I had left that I loved in danger. I couldn't kill myself. I had to keep moving on doing something. So, I went back to the only thing I had ever known how to do."  
The only thing she had known how to do. That thought kept repeating itself in Steve's head. He had never realized just how useless Vic felt. She was one of the strongest people he had ever met. She knew how to do everything. The problem was that, without Steve and Bucky in her life, made out to be the villain of the world, she couldn't motivate herself to do those things. She had felt backed into a corner. Steve looked up at the glass panel behind them that showed a small picture of William Stryker.  
"You killed Stryker," Steve said.  
"I did," Vic replied.  
"I always figured you would," Steve said honestly.  
He meant what he had said. He'd always figured that she would eventually kill Stryker. She was the only person who deserved to take his life. "That was the one death that may have brought me some joy," Vic admitted.  
"What happened?" Steve asked.  
"Do you want to see?" she asked.  
"Yeah, I do," Steve said.  
Vic placed a hand on his shoulder and shot them through time again. According to her, they were now in early nineteen forty-seven. They had landed on Alcatraz Island and were now entering Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. Steve shrank back slightly at the storm that was rattling the stone walls of the prison. Steve had never been inside a prison before. He had never been to a place like Alcatraz, that held some of the most notorious criminals in history, and apparently, William Stryker.  
Steve and Vic were following the old version of Victoria as she entered the supermax prison. The old Victoria raised her hand and sent out a signal to the brains of the guards and soldiers were looking over the prisoners in Alcatraz. All three of them watched as the bodies of the guards fell to the ground or drooped back in their chairs, all in a dazed state. Victoria walked into the prison, Steve and his Vic at her heels, and he heard the howling of the prisoners, wondering what had happened. The prisoners fell silent at the sight of Victoria entered the cell block.  
Steve knew that some of the men in the cell block likely had no idea who she was as they would have been imprisoned for most of their lives. They were audibly wondering who the woman was and what she had done to the men. Some vile comments were thrown her way as she passed the cells, but she acted as though she hadn't heard them. Eventually, Steve began hearing her name echoed across the cells. The men did know who she was. Steve could hear them muttering among themselves. Vic passed a man Steve recognized as Robert Stroud.  
He had seen the murderer's photograph in newspapers growing up. Stroud tipped his hat to her. "Miss," Stroud greeted.  
"William Stryker," Victoria growled, turning to meet Stroud's eyes. "Where is he?"  
"Cell seventy-two," Stroud answered.  
Victoria strutted through the prison, ignoring the stares and occasional jeers from the male prisoners. A chill went up Steve's spine as they passed Alvin Karpis, another infamous killer. A broad smile split his mouth as Victoria walked past him, not even sparing a glance. Steve couldn't understand how she wasn't freaked out by it. But Victoria was determined to get to her old instructor. She reached a cell at the end of the path and stopped, looking in. Steve saw William Stryker rise and walk to the bars. The prisoners fell silent as they watched the exchange.  
William Stryker stared at Victoria like he had seen a ghost. "Victoria," Stryker breathed.  
"Hello, William. It's been a long time," Victoria said tonelessly.  
"What are you doing here?" Stryker asked.  
"Coming to see an old friend," she replied.  
The prison had fallen completely silent. No one was speaking. They all wanted to see what was about to happen. Victoria reached out to the iron-wrought gates and wrenched it open. There were some gasps and screams as the gate pulled free from the cell walls. Victoria threw it to the other end of the cellblock and entered Stryker's cell. The prisoners pressed themselves as far against the bars as they could to see what was going on. Victoria entered the cell with Stryker, her eyes lowering to his bare feet, which were disfigured with scars.  
"You look afraid," Victoria said, her eyes rising to his trembling jaw.  
"You have a life," Stryker said. "Don't -"  
"Don't throw it away," Victoria said, her lips turning up in a bitter smile. "Funny, Jefferson said the same thing when I saw him. Right before I broke his wife's arm, made her forget about their marriage, and disfigured him. He was one of your cronies. You were the ringleader."  
"People like you are the reason my family is dead," Stryker said angrily.  
"That's not my concern. People like you are the reason my family is dead," Victoria replied. Stryker stared at her, likely trying to find a way out of the violent death he knew was coming his way. "I've lost everything. I have nothing to throw away."  
She truly had been torn apart by their deaths. Victoria wrapped a hand around Stryker's collar as she advanced on him. She took the fabric between her fingers and reared back, throwing Stryker over her head and out of the cell. He crumpled against the ground as there were loud jeers and chattering from the prisoners who were watching. Stryker groaned in pain, trying to pull himself away from her. Victoria followed him slowly. The fear had crept into Stryker's eyes. He backed into the wall, unable to go anywhere else. Victoria kneeled in front of him.  
Her hand nudged the bottom of his chin upward to meet her eyes. "You made a fatal mistake all those years ago. You trained me. You taught me to be a living weapon and for that, I thank you," Victoria said coldly. "If there was one thing you ever taught me, it was that I'm not weak."  
"You've proven that. You don't need to do anything else," Stryker tried to reason with her.  
"I have to do something, William. I can't just sit still for the rest of eternity. I don't know what I'll do forever, but I know how I'll start. I'm going to kill you and everyone else who had a hand in tearing my life apart," Victoria told him.  
"Victoria -"  
"Do you want to know what it felt like when I watched my fiancé fall to his death? Or how it felt when I stood with my best friend as he took his final breaths?" she interrupted.  
"Please -"  
But he never got a chance to finish. He was in the middle of pleading with her to spare his life when Victoria reached out and slammed her fist through William Stryker's chest. A horrible cracking and squelching noise echoed through the prison as Victoria's hand went through his ribcage. Stryker fell back against the stone wall of the prison, still alive with his eyes as wide as saucer plates. He looked shocked. Even Steve was surprised. He had expected her to toy with him for a little while, not just kill him outright.  
In a few moments, Stryker would be dead. Victoria smiled nastily as the screams and jeers echoed through the prison. Many of the prisoners were jumping up and down and banging against the bars of their cells. Victoria pulled her hand from Stryker's chest, taking his heart with her. She unfolded her fingers from around his heart and turned the organ over in her hand. The blood was still dripping from it as it twitched weakly, trying to pump blood through the body it was no longer attached to. Stryker was still alive. There was still some blood pumping oxygen to his brain.  
"It felt like that. The only difference is that I have to keep living with it," Victoria snarled. She tightened her grip around the organ as she crushed his heart in her hand and dropped it to the ground. At that same moment, the light began to leave Stryker's eyes. He never even got the chance to scream. "Goodbye, William."  
They stared at each other for a moment as Victoria rose from her crouched position and walked off. The prisoners were staring at her with both shock and amusement on their faces. There was no screaming this time. Victoria walked through the hall and headed out of the prison. Steve and his Vic watched Stryker as he sat on the ground, the life fading quickly from his eyes. The guards began waking up as Victoria left the prison. They rose to their feet and stared at the body of William Stryker, obviously wondering what the hell had just happened.  
Without warning, the pair were sucked back into the real world. Vic took a step back and threw her hands out to the side. "There you have it," she said quietly.  
"He deserved it," Steve said determinedly.  
Vic's light eyebrows furrowed. "You believe that?" she asked.  
"He had nothing to live for," Steve growled.  
"That wasn't the response that I was expecting," Vic said.  
They exchanged another quick look as Steve gave her a weak smile. "You don't disgust me, Vic," Steve said. Her gaze moved to meet his eyes. She didn't look happy but she did look relieved. "I'm not exactly proud of everything you've done since I went in the ice but I know that you had your reasons and I know that you didn't see an end to your suffering."  
"That's true." Steve wondered if she would stop there, but she continued. "Steve, since I found out that you were still alive, I've been terrified that you would find out the truth. I wanted you to know and I was trying to find a way to tell you. I was just so afraid that the moment the truth came out you would hate me. I had already lost Bucky and I'd lost you once before, I didn't think I could tolerate losing you again."  
They were best friends. They couldn't lose each other. "You're not losing me. Not now and not ever," Steve promised.  
He'd meant every word. She was never going to lose him. Vic's eyes watered as Steve grabbed her arms and pulled her into him. They stood pressed against each other for a long time as Vic cried into his shoulder. It was a release of emotion and who knew how long she had been holding all her emotions in? Judging by the look on her face, she hadn't let anyone see her this way in a long time. Maybe she hadn't let anyone see her this way since the nineteen forties. Steve pressed a comforting kiss into her hair.  
Steve wanted her to know that, no matter what they had done, they were still best friends. She still cared about him and he still cared about her. Steve tapped her playfully against the spine as he shook her back and forth. Vic chuckled through her tears, hiding her face in his arms. Steve laughed too as he felt her begin to relax. Steve wasn't happy with what she had done for all the years he had been gone, but more than anything, he was happy to have her in his life. Just as she couldn't stand to lose him, he couldn't stand to lose her.  
They were the one thing that the other had always had. No matter what, they had always been at each other's side. When they were the outcasts they could always rely on one another to talk through a bad day. When he had joined the Army training, she had been the one to watch over him and ensure that his transformation to Captain America would be safe. She had trained him. She had protected him. She had been there to cry with him after Bucky's death. Now, even in this new life, she was still here for him.  
A long time passed before Steve and Vic pulled apart. "The conversation isn't over," Steve said as gently as possible. "You know that, right?"  
"It's been seventy years. We have a lot to go over," Vic admitted.  
Steve smiled at her. He was looking forward to the conversation that needed to happen at its own pace. He didn't mind having to wait to hear the whole story. "I'm not asking you to tell me everything at once. I know that's too much for either one of us, but I want to know what happened. The good and the bad," Steve told her.  
Vic let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. "The good," she chuckled.  
"There had to be some good," Steve said hopefully.  
She smiled for the first time that evening. "There was." Steve smiled at her. He was eager to know what the good was, but he knew she was done talking for tonight. "I will tell you everything when the time is right."  
"That's all I'm asking," Steve said. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder as she melted into his side. "I think it's time to get out of here."  
"Please," Vic said.  
"Let's go home," Steve said.  
"Do you want me to take you back to the Retreat?" Vic asked.  
For a moment, Steve almost considered going back to the Retreat, but it was so lonely being there. No one was around and he missed her. He didn't want to walk away from her again. "No. I don't want to be alone tonight and I don't want to leave you either," Steve said. Vic smiled. Neither one of them wanted to be alone after the day's events. "I was thinking that this might be my last day at the Retreat."  
Vic's face turned up in the brightest smile he had seen in a long time. "Really?" she asked.  
"It's time for me to come back to the real world," Steve said.  
"I've been hoping you would say that," Vic said.  
"Come on," Steve said.  
It had been hours since they had arrived at the Smithsonian. It was time to leave. Vic smiled up at Steve as he linked their fingers together, pulling her out toward the exit of the Smithsonian. She had one hand wrapped around his arm as they walked past the guard she had knocked out earlier, both now chuckling at the funny moment. As they headed out onto the front steps of the museum, Vic lowered one hand around Steve's waist. She glanced up at him before they took off. Steve raised an eyebrow, wondering what she was thinking.  
"How about we take the scenic route?" Vic offered.  
Steve smiled. "The scenic route it is."  
Vic smiled back at him. "Hold on, soldier."  
And so, Vic blasted off the concrete sidewalk without warning. Steve shrunk against Vic's side as she burst out with a belly-deep laugh. The laugh made Steve erupt into fits of chuckles. He hadn't sure if she was capable of laughing like that anymore. He was glad to know that they were one step closer to being back to their old friendship. He couldn't imagine what his life would be like without her, especially not a life in a world that he didn't know in the slightest.  
Even though flying made Steve slightly nervous, Vic had always enjoyed scaring people with her flight, especially as she didn't take it easy. She did eventually slow down as she reached high into the sky. They soared over Washington, D.C., and looked down at the lights that were sparkling over the city. Steve, unlike Bucky, had no fear of heights since undergoing the super-soldier serum. Steve let out a breath as they soared slowly over the city. Their relationship may have had a new tenseness in it, but he would always love her and always be glad to have her in his life.  
Victoria's P.O.V.  
It felt as though a thousand pounds had been lifted off of my chest. I knew that things weren't over with the conversation surrounding my past. There were still a thousand things I had to talk to him about. There were still so many things about my past that I needed to divulge. Some were difficult and others were little things. All I could do right now was enjoy that he was grateful that I had told him the truth. Though, someone had forced me into it. The conversation surrounding who had told Steve the truth would come later.  
We smiled at each other as I swooped through the beautiful landscape. It had been a long time since I had realized just how much I loved flying. There was something about it that could erase the worst concerns. There was the occasional time that I went flying just to get up into the clouds and enjoy the peace up there but I had long forgotten how much I loved it. Up here there were no horrible comments that I had to endure. Up here, I was able to clear my mind and be myself. The real me.  
Not the version of me the media had created. Not the nightmarish mutant that took out her anger on perfectly innocent private citizens. That wasn't me. Whatever I had done, I'd always had my reasons. I looked at Steve as we flew over the tops of large trees. He looked like he was having a good time. Maybe I wasn't the only one who wanted to distract themselves. Up here, maybe he was able to briefly forget that we lived in the modern world now. This might have been some comfort for him. His heart felt lighter than air.  
We took our time flying over Maryland and Delaware. We even briefly shot over to Pennsylvania to look at Philadelphia. We had a good time looking at the sights as we soared both low and high. Sometimes we dipped so low that we could reach down and touch the pavement below us. Other times we shot over lakes low enough to dip our hands into the water below us. When we moved into civilization I moved us up so high in the air that we flew through the clouds. That was when Steve seemed the most at peace.  
It was a shame that it had taken me so long to learn to fly. I had always loved it. It was the one time that I felt like I could truly enjoy myself and be lighter than air. All good things must come to an end though, as I eventually warped us toward New York. I didn't rush the ride to my home and Steve didn't ask me to speed up. We enjoyed the peaceful air as we moved slowly through the night sky. It was late but it was also a perfect time for us to be in our heads as we started to figure out ways to clear the air between us.  
Eventually, I had to admit to myself that it was time to go home. The sun had set long before we had even entered the Smithsonian. So, I moved us to the east and my apartment complex. The two of us smiled at each other as I landed as gently as possible; Steve still stumbled back a few steps. He looked up to the apartment building as I nodded. I was even more thrilled than I had expected to be that my friend had decided to come back to the real world. Maybe this was the way that we could get ourselves back on the path to being the best friends we used to be.  
It was well past three o'clock in the morning as we walked into the apartment complex. This was the only time of day that the reporters weren't here, though they would likely return around six o'clock to ensure that they didn't miss me leaving for an early-morning assignment. I took Steve's hand and led him into the apartment building and toward the staircase. We headed upstairs to the fifteenth floor with his arm around my waist and my head leaned on his arm. The fight had taken a lot out of us both, even though it was all verbal.  
Steve had never set foot in my apartment before. We had stayed together at the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility the night he had woken up from the ice before we had sent him to the Retreat the next day. Steve wandered into the foyer of my apartment and looked around. He must have liked it as there was a broad smile on his face. I figured that I would give him some time to look around. We had both always been nosy when it came to the other. I watched as Steve expectedly went to my fireplace mantle and began looking through my pictures.  
There were lots of them that crowded the small mantle. I watched Steve with my arms crossed over my chest, smiling as his hands traveled over the pictures. Some were taken with the men during the war. Others were on the farm with Chester. There were sweet ones of me laughing with Peggy. Many contained me whacking Howard. A large portion of them was of myself, Steve, and Bucky throughout our lives. Steve smiled as he picked up a picture of me getting a piggy-back ride from Bucky. I was laughing, pressing my lips against his throat.  
Steve was smiling as he held the picture in his hand. "This is cute."  
"Yeah. That was a fun day," I said. Steve placed the picture back on the mantle as his gaze traveled over to one of the pictures of the two of us. We were locked in the middle of a sparring match. Even though the picture was in black and white I could tell that he had a black and blue mark over his eye. "I hit you way harder than I'd meant to."  
Steve chuckled uncomfortably, running his hands over his eyes. "Yeah. I remember how hard you hit."  
Anyone who had been hit by me would attest to how uncomfortable my punches were. We smiled at each other as Steve continued looking over some of the other pictures I had sitting on the mantle. A few of them were of my newer friends. Some were of the X-Men; Kurt and Logan and Charles. Steve stared at them curiously as his eyes shifted over to the newest ones; I wondered if he would comment on Tony Stark, but he didn't. His eyes traveled right over that picture. He must not have seen the resemblance between the father and son.  
"New friends?" Steve asked, motioning to a picture of myself and Nat.  
"Yeah," I said, smiling at the large collection. It reminded me that I wasn't alone, even when it felt like I was. "I'm sure you'll meet most of them soon."  
Natasha was perhaps the most eager of my friends from S.H.I.E.L.D. to meet Steve. She had grown up hearing stories about him. I had been one of the first people to tell her about him when she was a teenager. She had grown up a strong woman and I looked forward to seeing how she interacted with Steve. He looked over the pictures for a few more moments before eventually looking back at me. We stared at each other for a long time. It was late and I was tired, but I knew I couldn't go to bed without saying anything to him.  
It was finally time for me to say what I knew I should have said a long time ago. "I'm sorry, Steve, for everything," I whispered.  
"It's not me that needs the apology," Steve said. I swallowed thickly. He was right. "Vic, I don't know if I understand what was going through your head. I don't think I can ever understand what you were thinking, but there was something selfless in your actions. You forced our friends away from you to ensure they would live their lives uninterrupted and spent your life alone and miserable because of it."  
He was perhaps the only person in the world who could still believe that I was a good person after everything I had shown him. "Good to know that even seventy years in the ice can't defeat that belief that everyone has some good in them," I said, laughing.  
"I know you. I know that, whatever you do, there's always good in you," Steve said.  
"There wasn't always," I insisted.  
Steve smiled as he shook his head. "Then maybe it's time to admit that someone knows you better than you know yourself," Steve replied. I looked to the ground bashfully. Maybe he was right. Maybe there had always been some good in me, no matter how deep it was buried. "I wasn't the only one who believed that."  
Of course. Bucky had believed it too. "Do you hate me?" I asked cautiously.  
Steve shook his head. "No. I could never hate you." I let out a breath of relief. "I just wanted the truth."  
"Well, you probably got more than you were hoping for," I said.  
Steve smiled at me. His smile was real, but it wasn't completely there. It would take some time to get us back completely to where we had been before he had gone in the ice. "You're here now, doing the right thing. You've tried to make up for your actions and that's what matters to me," Steve told me.  
"Thank you," I said quietly.  
"We're okay, Vic," Steve promised. "I'll always be glad to have you."  
"You have no idea what you coming back means to me," I said.  
Steve shook his head. "Trust me, I do. I love you."  
"I love you too," I said.  
We exchanged another long hug before pulling apart. It felt like we had taken a major step in the right direction today. Steve walked into the living room of my apartment as I yawned. I wasn't normally tired but I was feeling it now. Steve smiled at me as I wrapped an arm around his waist. I was glad that he had decided that he didn't want to go back to the Retreat. Until we could find him a more permanent place, he could stay with me. I was about to walk Steve back to the spare bedroom before I stopped and looked up at him.  
It was a longshot, but I didn't want to be alone. Not after today. "Will you stay with me tonight?" I asked, motioning over to the large couch. "Like we did when we were little?"  
Steve smiled. "Yeah."  
We pulled the blankets and comforters off my bed and the guestroom bed and walked them into the living room, sprawling out on the couch with our heads next to each other. We chatted quietly about the modern world for a while before Steve became the first to drift off to sleep. I smiled at his sleeping form. For the first time in a long time, I felt some peace as I prepared to go to sleep. The man next to me may not have been a friendly hookup or significant other, but he meant more to me than all of them combined. Something in my life finally felt right.


End file.
